CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Christian Missions. 



REV. JULIUS H. SEELYE, 



PROFESSOR IN AMHERST COLLEGE. 



NEW YORK : 
DODD AND MEAD, PUBLISHERS, 
751 Broadway. 




The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



Copyright. 
Dodd and Mead. 
1875- 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

FIRST LECTURE. 
The Condition and Wants of the Unchristian 



World 7 

SECOND LECTURE. 
Failure of the Ordinary Appliances of Civiliza- 
tion to improve the W t orld 31 

THIRD LECTURE, 
The Adequacy of the Gospel 59 

FOURTH LECTURE. 
The Millennarian Theory of Missions . . .94 

FIFTH LECTURE. 
The True Method of Missionary Operations . .128 

SIXTH LECTURE. 
Motives for a Higher Consecration to the Mis- 
sionary Work 155 

SERMON. 

The Resurrection of Christ the Justification of 
Missions 173 



FIRST LECTURE. 



THE CONDITION AND WANTS OF THE UNCHRIS- 
TIAN WORLD. 

When I was a student in college, a venerated 
missionary of the American Board,* distin- 
guished alike for his wisdom and piety and 
successful service, visiting Amherst, and relating 
some results of his thirty years' observations on 
missionary ground, told us, among other things, 
that we, having always lived in a Christian land, 
could have little conception of the vices and the 
degradation of the heathen. Though I hardly 
understood the remark at the time, and never 
felt its force until my own recent observation 
gave me some opportunity of testing its truth, 
it no longer excites my wonder ; and I should 

* Rev. Dr. Poor. 

7 



8 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



now be surprised to hear it contradicted by any- 
one familiar with the actual condition of the un- 
christian world. My observations have given 
me a deeper sense than I ever had before of the 
darkness which rests upon the world without the 
knowledge of Christ, and a deeper conviction, 
also, that this darkness has no power of its own 
to turn itself into the day. I am sure you will 
experience the same sentiments, and be prepared 
for the further considerations to be presented in 
these lectures, if I can set before you at the 
outset a clear and correct picture of the deg- 
radation of life, and corruption of society, which 
reign where the sway of the gospel is unknown. 
My own observations, however, on this point, 
have been far too limited to warrant even a 
sketch derived from these ; and, instead of at- 
tempting this, I shall rather use the drawings 
and the colors of clear eyes and sound hearts, 
whose opportunities of learning the truth, and 
whose disposition to present the truth, no one 
will question. 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



9 



Respecting the Chinese, says an observer of 
singular accuracy, "With a general regard for 
outward decency, they are vile and polluted in a 
shocking degree: their conversation is full of 
filthy expressions, and their lives of impure 
acts. . . . Brothels and their inmates occur 
everywhere, on land and on water. . . . They 
feel no shame at being detected in a lie, though 
they have not gone quite so far as not to know 
when they do lie ; nor do they fear any punish- 
ment from their gods for it. . . . There is nothing 
which tries one so much, when living among 
them, as their disregard of truth. . . . Their 
proneness to this fault is one of the greatest 
obstacles to their permanent improvement as a 
people, while it constantly disheartens those 
who are making efforts to teach them. ,, * 

In the theory of Chinese ethics, taught con- 
tinually in their schools, sincerity is described 
as the way of heaven, and the first of excel- 
lences. " Never/' say the Chinese classics, 

* Dr. S. Wells Williams, Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 96. 



IO 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



" has there been one possessed of complete sin- 
cerity who did not move others. Never has 
there been one who had not sincerity who was 
able to move others." * " But," says Prof. Kidd, 
" if this virtue had been chosen as a national 
characteristic, not only to be set at defiance in 
practice, but to form the most striking contrast 
to existing manners, a more appropriate one 
than sincerity could not have been found. So 
opposed is the public and private character of 
the Chinese to genuine sincerity, that an enemy 
might have selected it as ironically descriptive 
of their conduct in contrast with their preten- 
sions. Falsehood, duplicity, insincerity, and 
obsequious accommodation to favorable circum- 
stances, are national features remarkably promi- 
nent." f The same writer declares, that if we 
judge of the morality of families from the ad- 
vices of moral writers, and from the records of 
domestic manners which the Chinese themselves 
furnish, the appalling conclusion is reached, that 

* Mencius, iv. 1, 12. f China, p. 205. 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. II 

almost every vice noticed in the Scripture is 
practised in detail. 

" Chinese society," says the Abbe Hue, 
" has a certain tone of decency and reserve, 
that may very well impose on those who look 
only at the surface, and judge merely by the 
momentary impression ; but a very short resi- 
dence among the Chinese is sufficient to show 
that their virtue is entirely external ; their 
public morality is but a mask worn over the 
corruption of their manners. We will take 
care not to lift the unclean veil that hides the 
putrefaction of this ancient Chinese civilization. 
The leprosy of vice has spread so completely 
through this sceptical society, that the varnish 
of modesty with which it is covered is contin- 
ually falling off, and exposing the hideous 
wounds which are eating away the vitals of this 
unbelieving people. Their language is already 
revoltingly indecent ; and the slang of the worst 
resorts of licentiousness threatens to become the 
ordinary language of conversation. There are 



12 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



some provinces in which the inns on the road 
have apartments entirely papered with represen- 
tations of all kinds of shameless debauchery ; 
and these abominable pictures are known among 
the Chinese by the pretty name of flowers.' * * 

" Lying among the Burmans," says Malcom, 
" though strictly forbidden in the sacred books, 
prevails among all classes. They may be said 
to be a nation of liars. They never place confi- 
dence in the word of each other ; and all dealing 
is done with chicanery and much disputing. 
Even when detected in ajie, no shame is mani- 
fested ; and unless put on oath, which a Bur- 
man greatly dreads, no reliance whatever can be 
placed on the word of any man." f 

Bishop Heber, whose opportunities of judging 
of the Hindoos were ample, declares of them, 
" I have never met with a race of men whose 
standard of morality is so low, who feel so little 
apparent shame in being detected in a falsehood, 

* Travels in the Chinese Empire, vol. ii. p. 326. 
t Travels in South-eastern Asia, vol. i. p. 191. 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



13 



or so little interest in the sufferings of a neigh- 
bor not being of their own caste, or family, 
whose ordinary and familiar conversation is so 
licentious, or, in the wilder and more lawless 
districts, who shed blood with so little repug- 
nance."* Infanticide prevails in India, as it does 
in China, to an awful extent. One of the 
earliest English missionaries sent there, Rev. 
William Ward, gives the testimony of a Hindoo 
pundit, that the number of children put to 
death by their mothers in the province of 
Bengal alone, could not be less than ten thou- 
sand every month, f Though, since the estab- 
lishment of the English rule in India, this fright- 
ful crime has lessened in extent, it is yet far 
from having disappeared. $ 

La Perouse, the French navigator, quite fa- 
miliar with, and, if report says truly, largely tinc- 
tured by, Rousseau's picture of the innocence 
of savage life, thus speaks of the Sandwich- 

* Ward's India, p. 286. t Ward's Hindoos, vol. i. p. 292. 
t Butler's Land of the Vedas, p. 470. 



14 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Islanders before Christian missions reached 
them : " The most daring rascals of Europe 
are less hypocritical than these natives. All 
their caresses were false. Their physiognomy 
does not express a single sentiment of truth. 
The one most to be suspected is he who has 
just received a present, or who appears to be 
the most earnest in rendering a thousand little 
services." * In respect of the same people, Mr. 
J. J. Jarves expresses his convictions, derived 
from a nearly four-years , residence at these 
islands, with a diligent study of their history, 
in these terms : "The Hawaiian character, 
before it had received any influence from Chris- 
tianity and civilization, may be thus summed 
up : from childhood, no natural affections were 
inculcated. Spared by a parent's hand, a boy 
lived only to become the victim of a priest, an 
offering to a blood-loving deity, or to experience 
a living death from preternatural fears. . . . No 
moral teachings enkindled a love of truth. . . . 

* Voyages, vol. i. p. 377. 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



IS 



Theft, lying, drunkenness, riots, revelling, 
treachery, revenge, incest, lewdness, infanticide, 
murder, — these were his earliest and latest 
teachings/' * 

There are certain phases of life often seen 
among Pagan people, by which a casual observer 
is led to a very superficial and quite erroneous 
opinion respecting them. This same writer, in 
speaking further of the Sandwich-Islanders, 
declares that " they possessed a power of endur- 
ance of pain which was wonderful to the more 
delicately reared white man. A like insensi- 
bility pervaded their moral system. The native, 
accustomed to scenes of blood, seeing his 
neighbors and friends fall about him, took no 
warning, but enjoyed his animal pleasures with 
a heartiness which vigorous health alone could 
give, and a thoughtlessness of the morrow, and 
carelessness of results, which deceived many 
into the opinion that they were a happy, cheer- 
ful, and simple race." f 

* Hist. Sandwich Islands, p. 94. f Ibid., p. 97. 



i6 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



" Murder is unknown among the Tajeks," 
says De Bode, "not because of its heinous 
nature, but because they have not courage 
enough to commit it." * " It is not to be in- 
ferred/' says Wilson in his "Western Africa," 
" that the gentleness and external polish mani- 
fested by the Mpongwe people is based upon 
any real moral worth. A great deal of the 
smoothness and polish which they evince in 
their intercourse with white men is entirely 
fictitious. They are sadly addicted to falsehood, 
insincerity, deception, and dissimulation. In all 
these respects, they have no rivals.*' f 

But this condition is not new. That the most 
abominable vices, that a corruption of society 
and life exceeding in its actual facts the wild- 
est range of fancy, have always prevailed in 
the unchristian world, every student of history 
knows. This is not simply true among bar- 
barians, or wild and savage tribes, but appears as 
distinctly among the most renowned trophies of 

* Bokhara, p. 71. t Ibid., p. 297. 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



■7 



civilization and culture. Ancient Greece, in its 
palmiest days, is no more conspicuous for the 
wealth of its culture than for the wonders of its 
corruption. Society there was not simply pure 
on the surface, and polluted beneath ; but it was 
all pollution, — on the face of it, and through all 
its depths. If this be thought too strong a 
statement, it can be abundantly and quite easily 
justified. The Greek language discloses it. What 
a host of unclean images are uncovered as one 
studies the words of this most cultivated tongue ! 
The Greek classic authors disclose it. How full 
their revelation of the vices of their time, and 
how clear the evidence which they furnish, that 
these vices belonged not simply to the ignorant 
and the outcast, but also to the most polished 
circles of their most polished life. " All men," 
says Aristotle, "desire justice to be done them- 
selves ; but in their relation to others the ques- 
tion of justice is unheeded." * Parmenides is the 
most brilliant name in the Eleatic school of 
* Polit., viL 2, 8. 

2* 



1 8 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

philosophy; and for his character and life the 
Greeks had such an admiration, that a life like 
Parmenides became a proverb among them. But 
he is specially mentioned as addicted to a vice 
too revolting to be named, which every student 
knows to have been dominant among the Greeks 
and Romans, as it has been among the Celts and 
Tartars, and is still among the most prominent 
Pagan and Mohammedan people, but the exist- 
ence of which, one in a Christian land finds it 
well-nigh impossible to believe. 

At Lesbos, — the home of music and poetry, 
the birthplace of Alcaeus and Sappho and Arion 
and Terpander, — whose musicians, as a class, 
were famous above all the Greeks, and whose 
refinement and intellectual culture are famous 
still, this vice was so prevalent, that the island 
itself gave it its name. Not only Parmenides, 
but Eudoxus, Xenocrates, Aristotle, Polemo, 
Crantor, and Arcesilaus are specially mentioned 
among the philosophers as given to this same 
vice ; and even the names of the youths of whom 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



they were enamoured are recorded.* The phi- 
losophers were as a class noted for this vice, and 
this to such a degree, that Plutarch, f in his 
treatise on the education of boys, declares that 
parents wishing their children to be pure would 
not tolerate their having any acquaintance with 
philosophers. Zeno, the Stoic, not only prac- 
tised this impurity, but openly acknowledged 
and defended it. We have the statement of 
Sextus Empiricus, that the Cynics and heads 
of the Stoic school regarded this practice as 
indifferent to morality, J but that its real and 
revolting nature was quite apparent, is clear 
from the excuses and palliations often urged in 
its behalf, and as often ridiculed by the 
ancients themselves. We have the testimony 
of Lucian § and of Cicero, || who also quotes 
Ennius and Epicurus, to the effect of the 
gross and carnal nature of this vice. Arno- 

* Dollinger, Gentile and Jew, vol. ii. p 243. 
f De lib. educ, 15. § Amores, 51. 

J Pyrrh. Hypot., iii. 23. 1! Tusc, iv. 33. 



20 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



bius,* in his awful picture of the nations 
without Christ, whose literal truthfulness one 
cannot contemplate without a shudder, bears 
copious witness to the same. That profligacy 
unbounded reigned openly in the highest circles 
of Greek and Roman life, is beyond any question. 
The stories told of Pericles and Lysias and 
Demosthenes and Socrates, and of Cassar and 
Augustus and Pompey and Cato and Catiline 
and Sylla and Crassus and Antony, — told openly 
and without contradiction by the authors of the 
time, told often, and without any shame, by the 
persons themselves, as by Horace and Martial 
and Catullus, — seem to show all society plunged 
in a night of unbroken darkness, wherein the 
wild beasts of unbridled appetites and lusts 
hunt unhindered their prey. Marriage became 
a burden. f Children were an incumbrance, and 
might be destroyed with impunity, either before 
or after their birth. Abortion by the mothers, 
or the exposition of newly-born children in an 

* Adversus Gentes. t Plato, Symp., 192. 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



2 I 



out-of-the-way or unfrequented spot, to allow of 
the child's perishing, are formally approved and 
recommended by philosophers like Plato * and 
Aristotle, f This exposure of children to 
perish was also formally permitted by law in 
Athens and Sparta, and is so often mentioned, 
that it cannot have been of rare occurrence. 
Divorces became so common in Rome, that 
Seneca says, " There is not a woman left who 
is ashamed of being divorced, now that most of 
the high and distinguished ladies count their 
years, not by the consular fasti, but by the 
number of husbands, and are divorced in order 
to marry, and marry in order to be divorced." J 
Pity for the poor was so wanting in the Roman 
mind, that Virgil, § when describing the peace 
and repose of the wise man, extols him for being 
exempted from feeling pity for a needy person. 
The slave in Rome had no personal rights. He 
was a chattel for whose treatment, even though 

* Republic, v. 460. | De Benefic, iii. 16. 

t Polit, vii. 14, 10. § Geor., ii. 449. 



22 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



it was torture or death, there was no one to 
bring his master to account. Every thing was 
allowable and privileged as against a slave.* 
Florus relates the following incident : " At 
the time in which L. Domitius was praetor in 
Sicily, a slave killed a wild boar of extraordinary 
size. The praetor, struck by the dexterity and 
courage of the man, desired to see him. The 
poor wretch, highly gratified with the distinction, 
came to present himself before the praetor, in 
hopes, no doubt, of praise and reward ; but 
Domitius, on learning that he had only a javelin 
to attack and kill the boar, ordered him to be 
instantly crucified, under the pretext that the 
law prohibited the use of this weapon, as of all 
others, to slaves."! After relating the incident, 
the author naively remarks, " This may appear 
harsh, nor do I give any opinion on the subject." 
In Greece, slavery was really the corner-stone 

* Dollinger, Gentile and Jew, vol. ii. p. 259. 
f Epitome de Gestis Romanorum, iii. 19, 20 ; Gibbon, vol. i. 
p. 48. 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



23 



of society. The whole social and political 
fabric rested on it. Aristotle argues* that 
slavery is necessary to the very existence of 
the true household. Every true household must 
consist of freemen and slaves. The freeman 
needs his slaves, as the artist needs his tools. 
The slave is his master's tool, — an animated 
tool, but still only a tool. There can be but little 
more love for a slave than for a horse or an ox ; 
and the thought that any justice could be due 
a slave never seems to have entered the Greek 
mind. Plato f regarded it as one of the marks 
of an educated man that he despised his slaves. 
When a slave was brought into court to give 
testimony, he was always put to the torture. 
Torture accompanied the testimony of the slave, 
just as the oath accompanied that of freemen ; 
and the Attic orators — Lysias, Antiphon, Isaeus, 
Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Lycurgus — have 
all given their approbation to this procedure. 
For the owner of a slave to refuse to submit 

* Polit., i. 3 ; Eth. Nic, viii. 13. t Republic, viii 549. 



24 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



his slave to the torture (the slave himself had 
nothing to say) was considered a confession of 
the owner's guilt. Not only foreigners, — Ca- 
rians, Phrygians, Thracians, and Cappadocians, 
— but Greeks themselves, were held as slaves, 
and bought and sold by the Greeks. But of what- 
ever nationality, and whoever he was, fear and 
lust were the only motives in the life of the 
Greek slave ; the latter of which was continually 
leading him into every form of vice, gluttony, 
drunkenness, and wantonness. I suppose it to 
be literally true, that no vice, nor crime, nor 
cruelty can be named which did not show itself 
at home in the highest circles of the most 
blooming society of the ancient world. Pliny* 
expressly calls the Greeks the inventors of 
every vice. The greediness and craft and lying 
of the Greeks were a proverb. Distrust of his 
neighbors grew out of the knowledge every 
man possessed of his own untrustworthiness. 
When the power of Rome was extended over 

* Hist. Nat., xv. 5. 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



25 



the world, it carried with it the moral corruption 
of Rome, and brought back, also, the corruption 
which it everywhere found. Tacitus* confesses 
that the Romans had more power over the 
peoples whom they conquered, by exciting and 
gratifying their sensual tastes than by their 
arms. The picture which Paul has given in the 
first chapter of Romans, of the unchristian 
world is still and has always been literally true ; 
ancient or modern, it is the same : " Filled with 
all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, 
covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, mur- 
der, debate, deceit, malignity ; whisperers, back- 
biters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, 
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 
without understanding, covenant-breakers, with- 
out natural affection, implacable, unmerciful : 
who knowing the judgment of God, that they 
which commit such things are worthy of death, 
not only do the same, but have pleasure in them 
that do them." There is no abatement to be 

* Hist, iv. 64. 

3 



26 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



made from this picture. We can neither dimin- 
ish the darkness of its colors nor the terrible- 
ness of its extent. And it is just as true of 
the heathen world to-day, as in the time of Paul. 

This condition is not going to better itself. 
We are often told of tendencies inherent in 
human nature, which will work out by them- 
selves the perfection of the human life. We are 
treated, in our time, to much talk about evolu- 
tion and development, by which man has grown, 
first from a lower order of creation to a savage 
state, and then has risen from the savage, through 
successive stages, to the highest plane of civil- 
ized life. But such talk is in flat contradiction 
to the most palpable facts of history. We find 
no evidence of an originally savage condition of 
mankind. The earliest historic records we have 
of human life upon the earth are records of cities 
and sciences, and monuments of art and govern- 
ments, all showing a condition of high individual 
and social power. The traditions of different 
nations point back to a primeval period which 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



2/ 



was a golden age of innocence and knowledge. 
There is good evidence that the Great Pyramid 
is the oldest work of human hands now exist- 
ing ; * and this stupendous structure, which forty 
centuries have left almost unimpaired, shows a 
skill and science in its builders, which are still 
the admiration and the wonder of the world. 
The earliest facts of language, the deep knowl- 
edge of architecture and astronomy and geome- 
try and natural philosophy, which incontestably 
existed in the earliest times of which we have 
any trace, in Egypt and Chaldaea and India and 
China, the prominence and the power with which 
religion controlled the political and social order, 
and entered into the science and the art of the 
ancient world, are simply inexplicable, if barba- 
rism or a savage state were the original condi- 
tion of the race. 

The history of men thus far shows vastly 
more instances of decay than of progress. Gov- 
ernments, arts, languages, literatures, sciences, 

* Smyth, Antiquity of Intellectual Man. 



28 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



civilizations, religions, have deteriorated in in- 
stances unnumbered. Law has grown into des- 
potism ; liberty has degenerated into license ; 
public morals have been sunk in public corrup- 
tion ; and the virtues of men have been sup- 
planted by their vices on so vast a scale, that 
whether in respect of the numbers it has con- 
trolled, or the extent of time and territory which 
it has covered, a downward tendency in human 
nature, it must be confessed, is vastly more 
conspicuous than any inherent tendency to 
improve. 

This downward tendency, moreover, has never 
been checked by itself. No nation has ever 
risen, by its own forces alone, from a lower to 
a higher state. All upward impulses come first 
from above. The savage has never civilized 
himself. " No man/' says Herder, " has the 
birth of his mind, any more than that of his 
body, through himself alone." And it is with 
masses as it is with individuals : the impulse 
to rise, and the inspiration to rise, must come 



THE UNCHRISTIAN WORLD. 



2 9 



from without. The Greeks saw this truth, and 
declared, in their Promethean myth, that the 
fires which lighten men in their advancement 
are stolen from the gods. We can have no 
accurate reading of history, except as we recog- 
# nize what is actually revealed on every page 
of history, that human nature possesses no 
inherent power of progressive improvement. 
All its exhibitions of inherent power show 
only a progressive deterioration. Except as 
one nation receives impressions from another, 
or is lifted up by some manifestly super- 
human power, its actual course has been a 
descent from one degree of degradation and 
shame to another. No student of history will 
deny this most obvious fact. " Civilization," 
says Niebuhr, one of the most sagacious of all 
historians, " is never indigenous : it is an exotic 
plant wherever found." 

Given, then, this actual state of the unchris- 
tian world, given, also, this tendency to dete- 
riorate, and this inability in human nature to 
3* 



30 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



better itself, what sort of counteracting impulse 
is needed ? If we have any advancing civiliza- 
tion ourselves, which, of all its elements, shall 
be employed to bring the unchristian nations 
of the world into the same line of progress ? 



SECOND LECTURE. 



FAILURE OF THE ORDINARY APPLIANCES OF 
CIVILIZATION TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 

To the question at the close of our last lec- 
ture many answers are actually given ; the first 
of which in importance, to many minds, points 
to commerce, and to the ordinary influence of 
Christian nations, as the all-sufficient agency we 
need. But does commerce civilize ? Can trade 
of itself make men pure ? Unless guided and 
guarded by some other influence than their own, 
is there any thing in buying or selling to make 
men better ? Nay, does not the greed of gain 
grow by its own exercise ? and is there not always 
danger, even where virtuous impulses hold it in 
check, that its increase will weaken these and 
all other restraints, until it shall destroy them ? 

31 



32 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



There is ever the possibility that trade will make 
honest men dishonest : is there the least likeli- 
hood that it alone can ever produce the reverse 
result ? Honesty, one says, is the best policy ; 
but was ever a community, was ever a man, made 
honest because it was politic to be so ? More- 
over, since the world began, the most lucrative 
commerce, the commerce most tempting for its 
promise of large and speedy gains, has always 
been that which has trafficked with the bodies 
or the souls of men, as is witnessed by the 
slave-trade, the opium-trade, and the trade in in- 
toxicating drinks. There is no probability, there- 
fore, in the nature of the case, that commerce 
will improve men in their moral stature ; neither, 
as a matter of fact, do we ever find it doing so. 
The actual results of commerce have never 
appeared in the moral improvement of men ; 
while in unnumbered instances they have worked 
deterioration and decay. Commerce, to-day, is 
more widely extended than ever before ; and 
many fancy, that, through its avenues, Christian 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 33 



missions will find easy access to the nations 
without Christ. But, instead of this being jus- 
tified by facts, the exact opposite is true. In- 
stead of being favorable to missionary success, 
the actual influence of commerce is one of the 
strongest hinderances to Christian missions. No 
missionary whom I have ever found doubts this. 
No traveller with his eyes open, and willing to 
see, but will find irresistible evidence of the fact. 
When missionaries set before the heathen the 
virtues which Christianity enjoins, and which 
they affirm it is able to secure, and when rep- 
resentatives of nominally Christian lands show 
themselves not only lacking in these virtues, but 
abundant in all the opposite vices, — as is with 
sad frequency and prominence the case, — it is 
easy to see which of these conflicting represen- 
tations is likely to prevail. 

And if you turn to Christian governments, 
and expect that these, by their high-toned moral- 
ity, by their unselfishness and love of justice, 
are likely, in their dealings with the unchris- 



34 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



tian world, to represent attractively the Christian 
spirit, you will soon learn that these same gov- 
ernments have not shrunk from the grossest 
wfongs, and are very ill prepared to be messen- 
gers of peace and purity. Witness England in 
the opium-war with China, and the United 
States in our difficulty with Corea, and the pro- 
ceedings of England and Holland with the Achi- 
nese, and the attitude of our government still in 
reference to the Japanese indemnity ! Witness, 
also, the support of the English Government, con- 
tinued up to a very late date, of Pagan customs 
and worship in India, — a support not simply of 
permission, but of active contribution, — coupled 
with the early refusal of permission for Chris- 
tian missionaries to land or stay there, and the 
still continued prohibition of all Christian 
instruction in the schools which the English 
Government has there established ! Take in the 
whole attitude of the Christian nations of the 
world towards the unchristian, as seen in com- 
merce, or in governmental or national inter- 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 35 

course, and on what ground can you look for the 
improvement of the world from this source ? 

But will railroads and telegraphs, and the con- 
veniences of modern life, give us any hope ? Why 
should they ? Does the use of railroads make 
men honest here ? Is the management of these 
great institutions a conspicuous agency of moral 
reform among ourselves ? We need not depre- 
ciate the good which these appliances bring ; but 
it is a very misguided view which finds in them 
any thing in the least likely to regenerate and 
purify society. At the best, they are only 
means whereby other agencies for human im- 
provement may be facilitated. 

But if commerce, and national intercourse, 
and labor-saving inventions, and all the mechanic 
arts of our so-called modern progress, are without 
avail, there are many who think that the higher 
arts of civilization, — as seen in modern forms 
of government, and new institutions of society, 
and scientific methods of education, — directly 
transplanted from the civilized to the uncivilized 



36 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



world, will carry with them every needed bless- 
ing; while others, who look upon the gospel as 
the only ultimate means of salvation, still regard 
these higher arts of civilization as the needful 
first step towards the evangelization of the 
nations. Bishop Warburton, in his "Divine 
Legation of Moses," * declares that both Romish 
and Protestant missions had, up to his time, failed 
of the largest results, because they had attempted 
to Christianize, without previously civilizing, the 
heathen. " Christianity," he says,f " plain and 
simple as it is, and fitted in its nature for what 
it was designed by its author, requires an intel- 
lect above that of a mere savage to understand." 
Bishop Bloomfield J remarks, " The Christian 
religion may be said to form a kind of science ; 
for which very reason (and would that some 
who have a zeal, but not according to knowledge, 
will bear it in mind ! ) civilization ought ever 
to precede evangelization." Missionaries them- 
selves have not been wanting in the same senti- 

* Book ii. sect. v. f Vol. i. p. 398. % Notes, Heb. v. 12. 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 37 



ment. Hans Egede, the Danish missionary to 
Greenland, after his five and twenty years' ex- 
perience there, declares * that " it is a matter 
which cannot be questioned, that, if you will make 
a Christian out of a mere savage and wild man, 
you must first make him a reasonable man. It 
would contribute a great deal to forward their 
conversion, if they could, by degrees, be brought 
into a settled way of life." Such a notion has 
been effectually banished from those familiar 
with later missionary experiences among the 
Caffres and the Karens, among the New-Zealand- 
ers and the Hawaiians, among the North Ameri- 
can Indians and other savage tribes ; but we 
find it so prominently cropping out still in many 
quarters, among those more or less ignorant of, 
even if not indifferent to, the highest missionary 
success, that it demands a careful examination. 

It should be noted, then, in the first place, that 
savages do not cease to be savages merely by 
having the opportunity to become civilized. 

* Pp. 2ii, 212, quoted by Warburton, vol. i. p. 433. 
4 . 



38 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Civilization is not attractive to the savage. The 
arts and refinements of civilized life,' the bless- 
ings of law and order, instead of being objects 
of desire, are, to him, positively repugnant. 
This, in fact, is what makes him a savage, that 
he hates the very condition in which the civil- 
ized man finds his joy. He is conscious of but 
few wants, and those of the simplest sort, which 
it needs but few efforts to satisfy ; and the gifts 
of civilization, for which he feels no necessity, 
offer him, therefore, no advantages which he 
can appreciate, and can excite in him no efforts 
to obtain them. It should never be forgotten, 
that the first impulse to any improvement of a 
man's outward condition must come from the 
quickening of some inner inspiration ; and, until 
the savage has risen to a different intellectual 
or spiritual life, all the blandishments of civiliza- 
tion could no more win him to a better state 
than could all the warmth of the sun woo a 
desert into a fruitful field. When, in the good 
intentions of the government, homes were built, 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 39 



and the conveniences of civilized life were 
freely offered to the Chippewas of Canada, in 
order to win them to abandon their wandering 
ways, it was found that the Indians preferred 
their wigwams ; and the comfortable houses 
which had been provided found no occupants. 
The Quakers commenced their efforts with the 
Indians by attempting to civilize them ; but, 
after many years of costly and painstaking effort 
in this direction, the committee having it in 
charge report, " Within the last few years, we 
have had occasion to review the whole course of 
proceedings ; and we have come to the conclu- 
sion, from a deliberate view of the past, that we 
erred, sorrowfully erred, in the plan which was 
originally adopted in making civilization the first 
object ; for we cannot count on a single individ- 
ual that we have brought to the full adoption of 
Christianity."* 

* Evidence on the Aborigines, before a Committee of the 
House of Commons, 1833-34, p. 187, quoted by Harris ; Great 
Commission, p. 297. 



40 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



But what if we could educate the savage ? 
Yet how shall this be done ? If you send 
teachers, and start schools, and furnish the sav- 
age with all the appliances for the most exten- 
sive culture, how shall you induce him to employ 
the means with which you furnish him ? He 
does not desire knowledge any more than he 
does the power which knowledge brings. He is 
as indifferent to his ignorance as he is to what 
you call the comfort and conveniences of civil- 
ized life. While he must have knowledge, and 
some intellectual quickening, in order that he 
may seek any improvement in his physical or 
bodily state, there must, also, be something prior 
to the knowledge, and earlier than the intellect- 
ual quickening, before he can desire these. A 
moral and spiritual awakening must precede the 
intellectual. Men merged in sensualism, argues 
Plato in the " Sophist," must be improved before 
they can be instructed. Only as they become 
morally better can they become intellectually 
elevated and enlarged. There is here a deep 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 4 1 



truth of human nature and of history, which, if 
well considered, would settle this whole question. 
Men must be improved in order to be educated. 
Education follows as surely a moral improve- 
ment as flowers ^pen to the sunlight; but educa- 
tion is as powerless to secure that improvement 
as is the plant the light and warmth by which it 
is quickened. As far as we can trace it histori- 
cally, a nation's intellectual progress has always 
followed, never preceded, some new moral or 
spiritual impulse. If we look at nations noted 
for their achievements of intellect, — Egypt, 
Greece, India, China, or any of the cultivated 
nations of the modern world, — we shall find that 
their culture always grounds itself in their mo- 
rality or religion. Take, to illustrate this, any of 
the arts which mark the culture of a people, and 
trace their origin and history. It might be 
crudely supposed that architecture arose from the 
natural necessity man has of furnishing himself 
a shelter and a dwelling-place. But allowing 
this natural necessity to exist, and supposing it 



42 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



to have found its natural expression, the result 
has no more resemblance to architecture than 
have the huts of a Hottentot kraal to the pal- 
aces of Vienna and Versailles. Man's natural 
want of a shelter can be supplied, and, if we 
look simply at numbers, is supplied, by the great 
majority of men, with as little beauty and as 
little architectural skill as are found in the 
habitations of the ant or the beaver. 

But, aside from this, the simple truth is, that 
the history of architecture does not bedn with 
the history of human homes. The oldest re- 
mains of architecture are symbols and monu- 
ments of religious faith. Columns and colon- 
nades and temples, structures erected for wor- 
ship, or to symbolize some object or doctrine of 
religion — these, and not human dwellings, are 
the earliest indications we have of the dawn of 
architecture. Looking now, not in the light of 
any theory which prejudges the facts, but only 
at the facts themselves, we are obliged to sav 
that it was not the construction of his dwelling- 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 43 



house which taught man to build his temple, 
but exactly the other way. 

The same is true with sculpture, painting, 
poetry, music. It was a religious impulse which 
gave to all these their first inspiration. The 
oldest monuments we possess of any of these 
arts are associated with some religious rite or 
faith. But, more than this, we must also notice 
the undoubted fact, that the arts have grown in 
glory just as the religious sentiment has gained 
in power. The period of decadence in art is 
always indicated by a prior decline in religion. 
There is no high art, and I suspect we may also 
say, there is never a great genius, uninspired by 
some sort of a religious sentiment and impulse. 
It is no question here, whether the religion be 
false or true, fancied or real : the only point is, 
that it is religion, and not science nor philosophy, 
which gives the inspiration to art, and the living 
soul to genius. 

This truth, that the culture of the sentiments 
must precede that of thought, and that the 



44 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



thoughts of the intellect will be lofty as the 
sentiments of the heart are profound, is not now 
seen for the first time. Plato, Aristotle, and 
Bacon have expressed the same thing. " It was 
a happy genealogy," says Plato,* "which made 
Iris, the swift-winged messenger of the gods, by 
which divine thoughts are communicated to the 
human soul, the daughter of Thaumas, or Won- 
der." Aristotle speaks to the same effect when 
he calls f wonder the primitive philosophic im- 
pulse ; and Bacon only re-echoes the thought $ 
in his "Admiratio est semen sapientise." If, 
therefore, we begin our attempts to improve men 
through instruction of their intellect, we shall 
end where we begin, having only blown a bubble, 
which bursts as soon as blown. 

But, beyond all this, there is another ground 
on which the failure of education to do the work 
we need may be predicted. If you could start 
with education, and carry it on to any degree, this 
is not sufficient to remove the corruption with 

* Theastus, 155. f Metaph., i. 2. J De. Aug. Sci., i. 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 4$ 



which men are perishing. No amount of intel- 
ligence ever saved any people ; and the most 
costly educational system is consistent with, 
and is sometimes actually found in, the most 
corrupt social state. At the very time when 
Athens was shining with the light of art and 
philosophy, whose splendors still illumine the 
world, the utmost profligacy and debauchery 
also prevailed, and this not simply with the slave 
and the outcast, or with the common people, 
but, as we have already noted, with the very 
men ■ — the artists and philosophers and schol- 
ars — who mark their time with their glory. He 
who supposes that splendid intellect, or high 
attainments, joined with exalted rank in society, 
are sufficient to make men pure and blessed, 
can be easily convinced of his mistake, if will- 
ing to be convinced. I will not ask him to read 
the lives of Roman emperors and empresses, of 
Nero and Caligula, and Commodus and Cara- 
calla, nor to look at Alcibiades and the social 
life of Athens in its palmy days ; but let him 



4 6 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



come nearer our own time ; let him peruse the 
" Confessions of Rousseau/' and the French Mem- 
oirs generally of the last century ; let him see 
the court ladies of Louis XV. present in their 
richest ornaments at the tearing- to-pieces of 
Damiens, and expending their pity upon the 
noble horses which found it so hard to accom- 
plish their horrid work ; let him become familiar 
with the facts illustrative of this point in the 
French Revolution, turning his attention not 
simply to the raging of the rabble, — of whose 
unnumbered atrocities the tearing-out of the 
heart, and drinking the blood, of the Princess 
Lamballe, whom they had just slain in the 
streets, is only an instance, — but especially 
noting the proceedings of those scholarly and 
highly-cultivated men and women of their time, 
of whom one writer * has said, that they " found 
their highest pleasure in the most abominable 
sensualities and deeds of murder, and who, 
together with this, sought always to display 

* Ackerman, Christian Element in Plato, p. 196. 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 47 



their mental cultivation in the most splendid 
manner in public and social life," — let one with 
only a cursory reading of history but ponder the 
facts which he finds, and the need will be clear 
enough of something more than knowledge, or 
culture, or refinement of manners, to make men 
virtuous and pure. 

There is in India a large class of educated 
Hindus, who have been carefully trained in 
English schools, whose literary culture would be 
conspicuous, judged by our own standard, and 
who have so far broken from their old super- 
stitions, that they would be almost as much 
shocked as we ourselves to be now called idol- 
aters ; but, whether their high education has 
furnished them any moral improvement, they 
themselves shall say. In a paper * conducted 
wholly in the interest of the Brahmo Somaj, 
and representing as much, if not more than, any 
other paper in India, the intelligence of the edu- 
cated Hindus who are not Christian, I read the 

* Indian Mirror, September, 1873. 



48 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



following: "The Hindu heretic sees no via 
media between orthodoxy and irreligion, and 
plunges head foremost into habits of dissipation, 
carnality, and dishonesty. Unbelief acts on the 
lower propensities of the mind, and stimulates 
them. Where there is no fear of social or reli- 
gious discipline, the heart naturally runs into 
vicious excesses. There are many of the 
young Bengal school who give up Hinduism, 
then become intemperate, lustful, dishonest, 
untruthful, and then become rationalists and infi- 
dels, with a view to justify their sins with false 
philosophy. Their infidelity and sin act and 
re-act on each other, and grow simultaneously. 
Our young countrymen ought to know that 
rationalism is, in many cases, immorality in a 
philosophical garb, and scepticism is the fore- 
runner of a multitude of vices." 

No wise man will decry intellectual culture. 
Only ignorance despises knowledge. But the 
knowledge which is not inspired by virtue can 
give no inspiration to virtue. Unless it strikes 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 49 



its roots in a soil already pure, its blossoms and 
fruit will be only corrupt and corrupting. A 
godless education is not an object of wise desire 
for any people. It has no power to purify, and 
thus no salvation. It does not draw out the 
roots of evil, but, rather, strikes them deeper 
into the soul. It may deck the evil in a garb of 
beauty, and weave for it garlands of song; but 
it is evil none the less: and, by making its mani- 
festations more attractive, it only enables it, 
like Satan when robed in his garments of light, 
the more effectually to deceive. 

But it is said that we can reach the trouble 
by giving instruction in morality. This attempt 
has been often made. The argument in its 
behalf is plausible. Men are immoral : therefore 
teach them morality. Set before them their 
duty, and make this so clear that it cannot be 
mistaken; and then the weight of obligation will 
be so strong, that it must be obeyed. But no 
man does his duty simply because he knows 
what his duty is. Unless he loves it, no clear- 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



ness of knowledge will ever induce his obedi- 
ence. Men are not, and certainly it is true in 
general that they never have been, raised from 
vice to virtue, from sin to holiness, from moral 
sickness to moral health, by morality alone. 
No matter how pure it may be, no preaching of 
morality has ever sunk deep into society, or 
shown itself able to have any wide control over 
the conduct of men. It has never shown itself 
able to mould society internally and from the 
centre. You cannot make a man virtuous, 
simply by teaching him virtue. You cannot be 
certain that a child will practise the ten com- 
mandments, simply because he has learned them 
by heart. The teaching is, of course, well, is 
not only important, but indispensable. How 
can men be led to do their duty, unless they are 
first led to know it ? How shall they believe in 
Him of whom they have not heard ? But, not- 
withstanding this, all the knowledge which men 
obtain of the divine commands, and their duty, 
never has been sufficient to lead them to a true 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 



5 1 



obedience. No theory of human nature is deep 
and thorough which does not recognize the 
actual foundation for this fact ; and no observa- 
tion of human conduct is wide or penetrating, 
which has not seen its frequent exhibitions. 

But can political and social changes do the 
work ? Shall we preach republicanism, and go 
with the Declaration of Independence and the 
doctrine of social equality, to the nations in 
darkness ? Alas ! unless there be a foundation 
laid in the purified and prepared character of a 
people, we could only build the republic upon 
the sands, to fall with the first flood, bringing 
only ruin in its fall. Political and social institu- 
tions cannot be made for any people : they must 
grow out of the spirit and character and ten- 
dencies of the people by whom they are adopted. 
They are not a dress which a nation wears, but 
a body into which a nation grows through the 
development of its national life. Political in- 
stitutions, therefore, for savages who have no 
national life, are impossible ; and the attempt to 



52 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 



change the political institutions of a people al- 
ready having a national history is idle, unless we 
can first change the life of the people themselves. 
Free institutions are possible wherever they are 
enjoyed, because the people have become pre- 
pared for them by a long and thorough training, 
— a training which sometimes shows itself in 
a slow growth of* centuries. Freedom is first, 
and must be seen in a knowledge of law and a 
reverence for law, in self-control, and a capacity 
for self-direction, before free institutions can 
have either permanence or value. Free institu- 
tions, which are the outgrowth and embodiment 
of freedom, will both perpetuate and increase 
the freedom from which they spring ; but, when 
we attempt to carry them over to a people not 
vet free, the immediate result is not libertv, but 
only license : -the government w r e had sought to 
establish becomes anarchy ; and the anarchy, 
in its turn, gives place to despotism. 

Social evil has its source, not in society, but in 
the individual heart, and cannot be remedied by 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE "WORLD. 



53 



any social changes, but only as the individual 
heart is reached and renovated. The heart 
knoweth its own bitterness ; and, however per- 
fectly we may seek to furnish a society with 
institutions, if we have done nothing more than 
this, it is only a surface-work. We have painted 
or plastered over the ulcer to make it look as 
though it were healed ; but it is not healed. 
It burns and rages at the core just as virulently 
as when its most ghastly and revolting features 
are before us. Individual selfishness and sen- 
suality are not altered in the least by all our 
efforts at social reform. ,; For from within, out 
of the heart of man, proceed evil thoughts, 
adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, cov- 
etousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, 
an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.''" 
Unless, therefore, we can control this inner 
fountain of corruption, nothing can check or 
change the quality of its corrupting streams. 
It is clear enough, as well from all history, as 

* Mark vii. 21, 22. 

5* 



54 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



from human nature itself, that the most potent 
of all forces in moving men is some sort of 
religion ; but is religion able to do what every 
other remedy has failed to accomplish ? Upon 
this point I venture to re-utter a truth which I 
have elsewhere expressed in the same terms.* 

There are two kinds of religion, and only two. 
The one begins with man, and seeks, by human 
endeavors, after a divine fellowship. It has 
various forms, — Paganism in all its branches, 
Mohammedanism, besides various representa- 
tives in nominal Christian lands ; but the one 
characteristic in which they are all united is 
that they seek after God in some way which the 
human intellect has been able to devise, and by 
some practices which the human will is able to 
perform. The God whom they seek may be 
called the Absolute, or Infinite, or Allah, or 
Buddha, or Brahm ; he may be dimly appre- 
hended, or worshipped as altogether unknown ; 
he may dwell in some high heavens above us, or, 

* Lectures to Educated Hindus, p. 23. 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 55 



as we are sometimes told, in some deep heavens 
within : but whatsoever he may be called, or 
whatsoever he may be, the human soul, perhaps 
by penance, perhaps by prayer, perhaps by calm 
and rapt contemplation, seeks if haply it might 
feel after and find him. In this point, Paganism 
and Pantheism — the rudest systems of untu- 
tored thought and the refined speculations of 
acute and cultured minds — meet and agree. 
The spectacle which these religions furnish is 
certainly most impressive. Whatever we may 
say of the forms in which the religious sentiment 
has been exhibited, no one can smile, none can 
sneer, at the sentiment itself. 

But what have all these efforts of man to find 
some religion accomplished ? Taking them all 
together, they have never furnished any deathless 
impulse to society, nor any undying inspiration 
to the soul. They have made men sometimes 
calm with a stoical indifference, and sometimes 
mute with a hopeless despair ; but they have 
never checked nor changed the tendency of the 



56 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

evil they were designed to destroy; while the 
mysterious instinct, the importunate craving, out 
of which the religion has its birth, the religion 
itself is equally unable to stifle or to satisfy. 

The reason why all these natural religions fail 
is quite clear. Human nature has no power of 
self-renovation. The heart cannot cleanse itself 
from its own corruptions. On the contrary, its 
attempts to cleanse itself only end by making 
itself more corrupt. The religions with which 
men have sought a fellowship with God have 
only widened the chasm which separated from 
him. The religions have become themselves 
the ministers of sin. " It was the god who 
tempted me to it," says a wretch in a play of 
Plautus, in excuse for his baseness ; and this 
illustrates what has always been true in Pa- 
ganism. The examples and incitements of the 
gods can be claimed in support of any vice or 
crime, however awful or abominable. Murderers, 
thieves, adulterers, courtesans, pimps, abusers 
of themselves with mankind, erect temples and 



FAILURES TO IMPROVE THE WORLD. 57 



altars, and solicit the aid of the gods in behalf 
of their base deeds. What ought to be, and 
what perhaps originally were, the most sacred 
acts of worship, become, under the influence of 
Paganism, — as is actually seen in the history of 
every great Pagan system, present or past, — the 
most gross and terrible scenes of sensuality 
and lust and violence. The pervigilium of 
Venus, the bacchanalia and worship of Hermes 
the cheat, the orgies rendered in homage of 
Astarte and Baal and Moloch by the Romans 
and Greeks and Western Asiatics of the ancient 
world, are paralleled in Eastern and Southern 
Asia to-day. Said the Abbe Du Bois, a Ro- 
man Catholic missionary at Mysore, * " I have 
never yet beheld a Hindu procession without its 
presenting me the image of hell." Said a mis- 
sionary who beheld the festival of Juggernaut,* 
" Fancy cannot picture, the imagination cannot 
conceive, the abominations of this worship." 
The language of another, who was twelve years 

* Arvine's Cyclopaedia in loc. Missions. 



58 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



a missionary in India, is,* " The human sacri- 
fices which Hinduism demands are frightful and 
appalling. The horrid scenes which have been 
discovered in this respect are almost beyond 
credibilitv." Notwithstanding the establishment 
of the British Government over India, the abomi- 
nations of Hindu worship are still sufficient to 
fill a Christian heart with horror. Quite recently, 
one of our most esteemed missionaries of South- 
eastern India assured me of the still continued 
existence, in the field of his missionary labor, of 
orgies practised in the temples in the name of 
the gods, and under the forms of worship, whose 
abominations could hardly have been exceeded 
by the Greek and Roman bacchanalia in their 
darkest days. There is no power to renovate 
or to sanctify in any religious system of the 
unchristian world. 

* Arvine's Cyclopedia in loc. Missions. 



THIRD LECTURE. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 

We come now to the question, whether Chris- 
tianity contains the remedial agency we need. 
Every other provision we have seen to fail. 
Commerce, civilization, education, political insti- 
tutions, natural morality, and natural religion, 
when closely scanned, reveal no power to check 
the downward tendencies of human nature, or 
lessen the corruption under which the world is 
perishing. There is only one remedy left ; and, 
if this shall have no efficacy, we may be hope- 
less of all good. What, then, does the gospel 
actually propose to accomplish for the world ? 
and what is the probability of its success ? 

The gospel does not seek to save society di- 
rectly, and at the outset. Its first work is with 

59 



6o 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



the individual heart. It comes to . a sinning soul ; 
and, however benighted or degraded that soul 
may be, the gospel preaches to it salvation from 
sin, salvation from the power and the punish- 
ment of sin. It announces itself, first of all, as 
a divine gift : " God so loved the world, that 
he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life/'* Here is no purchase on the 
part of man. No penance, nor prayer, nor sac- 
rifice, nor rites, nor any deeds which man could 
do, are allowed to have the least efficacy in 
procuring the blessings which the gospel an- 
nounces : " Not by works of righteousness 
which we have done, but according to his 
mercy, he saved us." f This is the first and 
continued announcement of the gospel. The 
salvation which it proffers is absolutely of the 
divine procurement, and is absolutely free : " I 
am the good shepherd : the good shepherd giv- 
eth his life for the sheep. . . No man taketh it 

* John iii. 16, f Tit. iii. 5. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 6 1 



from me; but I lay it down of myself. I have 
power to lay it down, and I have power to take 
it again." * Such a doctrine, we should notice, 
is quite peculiar. Nothing like it elsewhere 
appears. All other systems of religion an- 
nounce the divine favor only as the result of 
human efforts to obtain it ; and hence the abun- 
dance of penances and prayers, and deeds of fan- 
cied self-righteousness, which all these systems 
enjoin as means to appease and purchase the 
favors of God. No one of all the unchristian 
religions of the world offers any divine boon, 
except in return for a service which must first 
have been rendered from those by whom the 
blessing is to be received. 

It is a great mistake, therefore, and shows a 
wonderfully shallow acquaintance with the whole 
subject, when men classify Christianity with 
other systems, and the Bible with other books, 
as utterances all, in different forms, of man's 
religious nature. This is true of Mohammedan- 

* John x. ii, 1 8. 



62 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



ism, Buddhism, Brahminism, of the Koran, the 
Vedas, and so on. These are utterances, some- 
times pathetic, and often very profound, of man's 
sense of need and dependence, and also of his 
striving for that divine fellowship which he feels 
he needs. But Christianity is an utterance to 
man of the divine fulness ; and the Bible does 
not so much declare the human sense of want 
as it does the divine supply. The difference be- 
tween the Christian and every other religion is, 
therefore, infinite, — a difference which, however 
we may account for it, is yet so great and so 
clear, that while we may properly classify all * 
other religions as expressing, in different forms, 
the one human yearning and seeking-after 
God, Christianity alone possesses the thought, a 
thought which penetrates it through and through, 
of a divine yearning and seeking-after man. 
" The Son of man is come to seek and to save 
that which was lost." * 

Note now the effect of this announcement 

* Luke xix. 10. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 63 



upon the individual heart and will to which it 
comes. Very possibly, unheard-of doctrine as 
it is, it may sound at first as an idle tale. The 
sensuous, selfish, unbelieving soul, perhaps, gives 
it neither credit nor concern. " The god of this 
world hath blinded the minds of them which 
believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel 
of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine 
unto them." * It is not an easy work to lead an 
imbruted savage, steeped in superstition, and 
sunk in the lowest depths of sensuality, or a par- 
tially civilized Pagan, — sensuous also, and super- 
stitious, with an added pride and self-conceit in 
his own attainments, mingled with a contempt for 
what others possess, — to listen to such a mes- 
sage as the gospel brings. It requires patience, 
great energy, and great faith. No wonder that 
missionary efforts are often unsuccessful, nor 
that strong resolutions often waver after years 
of fruitless toil. But let the effort still be con- 
tinued. Let the message of God's love to man 

* 2 Cor. iv. 10. 



6 4 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



be proclaimed unweariedly, till the strange 
thought finds some lodgement, and the dark 
mind begins to see it, and the proud mind 
begins to feel it ; what sort of a sentiment will 
then begin to stir the soul ? For the first time 
then the darkened mind gains some knowledge 
of its own darkness. The darkness cannot dis- 
close itself. Sin has no power of self -revelation. 
Go and tell a man that he is a sinner, and you 
cannot thus make him see or feel the fact, how- 
ever evident to yourself or others it may be. 
The darkness is only disclosed by the light. Sin 
is only revealed by the power of a holy law. " I 
was alive without the law once ; but when the 
commandment came, sin revived, and I died." * 
We only know ourselves through the knowledge 
of God, and we only know ourselves as sinful in 
the presence of his holiness and love. 

Now, let this thought of God's mercy to sin- 
ners, of God's love to man, once be shown to 
men who have never known it before, and their 

* Rom. vii. 9. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 



65 



own contrariety to this love, their selfishness 
and degradation and sin, of which they had been 
equally ignorant, comes up before them with 
appalling power. As Isaiah, when the vision of 
the glory of Jehovah came to him in the temple, 
saw his own sinfulness in the light of the divine 
holiness, so will the same vision carry with it 
everywhere the same revealing power; and the 
man who possesses it, w T hoever or wherever he 
may be; will exclaim, " Woe is me ! for I am un- 
done ; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips : 
for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of 
hosts." * 

But the power of the revelation does not end 
here. The knowledge of God, through which 
alone comes a true self-knowledge, can kindle 
with a living inspiration the soul to which its 
first revelation was like a consuming fire. The 
love which discloses the soul's selfishness can 
banish the selfishness which it first disclosed, 

* Isa. vi. 5. 

6* 



66 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



and bring out in the soul the clear lineaments of 
its own likeness, — the likeness of love. " We 
love God because he first loved us." * 

The love of duty, without which no impulse to 
right conduct is found, cannot be awakened by 
the duty itself. The duty will not be loved till 
it is seen to be obedience to a person whom we 
love. Our personal wills must be penetrated 
with a sense of loyalty to a personal sovereign 
whose commands are righteous, and whose law 
is holy, just, and good, before righteousness and 
holiness and justice and goodness can be the in- 
spiration of our life. But this is precisely what 
the gospel is designed to secure. When its mes- 
sage comes to one sunk in vice and sin, and 
demands a renovated life, it bases this demand 
wholly on an act of God's unmerited grace. 
The gospel does not require obedience to some 
abstract conception of duty, as the doing the 
right for the right's sake, and so on. The obe- 
dience is demanded for God's sake, for Christ's 

* I John iv. 19. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 6/ 



sake, because of the love of God. " I beseech 
you, therefore, by the mercies of God/ 5 * is its 
constant plea. The grand motive which it urges 
to righteousness is the great gift we have re- 
ceived from a righteous and loving God. The 
love of Christ — Christ's love to us — is the con- 
straining power by which, in the gospel, we are 
led to live, not unto ourselves, but unto him who 
died for us, and rose again. f In the law which 
urges obedience for righteousness' sake, there is 
a blessing given, but only because it has been 
bought. It comes only as a return, a payment for 
the obedience rendered. But the gospel places 
the other side foremost. It puts the blessing 
first. Not only before the obedience, but in the 
midst of our disobedience, the blessings of the 
gospel come. " For God commendeth his love 
towards us in that, while we were yet sinners, 
Christ died for us." % 

Now, this message cannot reach any man, be 
he savage or civilized, without a kindling inspi- 

* Rom. xii. I. j 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. J Rom. v. 8. 



68 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



ration. Let it once be recognized, let it but 
penetrate the indifference, the doubts, the pre- 
judices, which wrap themselves around the soul, 
and however feeble that soul may be, or how- 
ever sunk in selfishness and sensuality, this 
message will stir and lift it towards a forgetful- 
ness of self, and towards righteousness, with an 
impulse unknown before. " For the law of the 
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free 
from the law of sin and death. For what the 
law could not do in that it was weak through 
the flesh, God, sending his own Son, in the 
likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned 
sin in the flesh : that the righteousness of the 
law might be fulfilled in us, w r ho walk not after 
the flesh, but after the Spirit." * 

This is what the gospel, looked at ideally, is 
fitted to secure. This is its aim, its method; 
but what are its actual fruits ? Is it only an 
ideal scheme ? or can it accomplish w T hat it 
proposes ? The appeal is properly made to the 

* Rom. viii. 2, 3. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 69 

facts of history, and the challenge is as promptly 
accepted. The gospel has shown itself fitted 
to regenerate the world, in illustration of which, 
— since it is well for us to remember the hole 
whence we were digged, — we may cite, in the 
first place, the experience nearest to ourselves. 
Our ancestors, but a few centurier. ago, were 
sunk in all the wretchedness and superstition 
which we now find in the heathen world. For 
savage ferocity and brutal degradation, they have 
hardly been surpassed. The ancient Britons 
were wild men of the woods, who tattooed them- 
selves, and wore the skins of wild beasts ; who 
lived on flesh and milk, without tilling the 
ground ; whose towns were woods, surrounded 
by a mound of earth and a ditch ; who offered 
human sacrifices to their gods ; who practised 
polygamy ; and who, if Caesar can be trusted,* 
possessed among relations a community of wives. 
The ancient Scots were cannibals, delighting 
in the taste of human flesh. When they hunted 
* Bell. Gal., v. 14. 



yo CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

the woods for prey, it is said that they attacked 
the shepherd, rather than his flock ; and that 
they curiously selected the most delicate and 
brawny parts, both of males and females, for 
their horrid repast.* Even as late as the twelfth 
century, Henry II. of England declared to a 
Greek emperor, who had asked him of the state 
of Britain, that Wales was then inhabited by a 
race of naked warriors.f The ancient Saxons 
indulged in human sacrifices, and selected by 
lot one-tenth of their captives in war for a 
bloody offering to their gods. The ancient 
Gauls hung the skulls of their slain enemies 
around the necks of their horses, or up in their 
houses, and used them as drinking-cups in their 
feasts. In the family life of these wild savages, 
the husband possessed the right of life or death 
over his wife and children. All that we possess 
of peace and order, of home and family life, all 
the institutions of society most valuable to us, 
all purity among us of individual hearts, and all 

* Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 567. f Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 629. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. J I 



progress towards a better state, is no original 
inheritance. It comes from no development of 
native tendencies, but is a fruit borne by a new 
life with which these ancient savages became 
enkindled. 

That this new life was not begotten by the 
Greek or Roman civilization with which the 
Britons and Germans and Gauls came in con- 
tact, is clear from what we have already seen of 
the moral condition of the Greek and Roman 
world. Though possessing governments and 
arts, and social institutions, which gave a cer- 
tain degree of order, and a large degree of 
elegance, to their outward life, the Greeks and 
Romans, we have already seen, were sunk in the 
depths of a selfishness and sensuality and lust, 
from which no renovating impulse could spring. 
They needed themselves first of all to be re- 
newed. Neither could the genius for art, for 
speculation, for law, which penetrated the Greek 
and Roman world in the palmy days of their 
civilization, reproduce itself. When Rome, in 



72 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



the time of the Caesars, came in contact with 
the barbarians of Northern and Central Europe, 
this genius was already expiring. It had done 
its work. It had borne its fruits. It had ex- 
hausted itself. It had no power of reproduc- 
tion. Few pages of history are more instruc- 
tive to the historical student than the condition 
of the world just prior to the dawn of the day 
we now enjoy. For this dawn, there is no har- 
binger in the existing state of things. The 
deepening darkness gives no promise of the 
day. To change the corruptions of society, to 
renovate individual hearts, to drive out the 
darkness, and bring in the light and life of a 
new day, there needs the rising of a new sun 
with healing in his beams. The beneficent 
changes which have occurred in Europe, the 
beneficent influences which we now enjoy, in 
distinction from those of our ancestors fifteen 
centuries ago, I believe no careful student can 
ascribe to any cause separate from the preach- 
ing of the gospel of Christ. The most careful 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 73 



and profound students of history do ascribe 
them to this. That our present condition, with 
its incalculable blessings, is no development 
from original forces in our natural endowment, 
is still further evident from the fact that the 
power of the gospel is sufficient to produce the 
same results among people of the most diverse 
endowment. 

The current scepticism, that Christianity is a 
Shemitic religion, confined to certain races, to 
which it properly belongs, while it is only a 
delusion to suppose that it fits all races, in 
every stage of their development, is sufficiently 
answered in the actual facts of the case. Chris- 
tianity has found its triumphs, and shown its 
fruits, in every nation and tribe upon the globe ; 
and its results have been, in every case, the 
same. Virtue, social order, prosperity, blessed- 
ness, the elevation and improvement, in all re- 
spects, of the human life, are the uniform and 
exclusive inheritance of those who receive the 
gospel. The North-American Indians, who 
7 



74 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



have successfully resisted all other efforts to 
civilize them, and who are thought by many to 
be savages so irreclaimable that they must be 
exterminated before we can have peace on our 
western borders, have been, in many instances, 
changed, and have lost their savage state, simply 
through no other agency than the preaching of 
the gospel. In 1862 a savage attempt at the 
extermination of the whites was made by the 
Pagan Dacotahs, beginning with a general mas- 
sacre of the settlers who had encroached upon 
the Indians' hunting-grounds. A fierce war 
ensued, after which two thousand Indians, hav- 
ing been captured, were tried by a military com- 
mission, and three hundred were sentenced to 
death, of whom the larger part were subse- 
quently set at liberty through the intervention 
of President Lincoln. To these miserable cap- 
tives, Christian missionaries foun£ access ; and 
the gospel was preached with the most blessed 
effects. Within three years, more than five hun- 
dred Dacotahs (a number since largely in- 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 75 



creased) professed their faith in Jesus Christ, — 
a faith to which the fruits of a regenerated 
life are still bearing undoubted testimony.* 

At the meeting of the American Board at 
Minneapolis, in 1873, where, eleven years before, 
there was an Indian massacre, some of the very 
men engaged in the massacre were present as 
Christian believers, — no longer blood-thirsty 
and cruel, but meek and gentle and loving, 
with a demeanor and spirit declaring again the 
oft-told story : " If any man be in Christ, he 
is a new creature : old things are passed away ; 
behold, all things are become new." f Ojib- 
ways and Dacotahs, tribes between whom burnt 
such an enmity, that, in their savage state, no 
two could ever meet in peace, now sat in Chris- 
tian fellowship and* brotherly love at Christ's 
communion table ; and, as the venerable presi- 
dent of the Board remarked at the time, what 
seemed equally wonderful, the people of Minne- 

* Anderson's Lectures on Foreign Missions, p. 221. 
t 2 Cor. v. 17. 



7 6 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



sota sat with them, all together fellow-members of 
one Church, and fellow-disciples of one Lord. 

The Annual Report of the American Board for 
that same year notices * " with great satisfaction 
the fraternal interest that exists between the Da- 
cotah churches and the home-mission churches 
on the border. It gives the native brethren new 
strength and confidence on the one hand, and it 
inspires their white brethren with a stronger 
faith in the power of the gospel." "Whatever 
may have been the belief of any home-mission- 
aries in this territory before coming here," 
writes Rev. Joseph Ward to the " Home Mis- 
sionary Magazine," "no one of these believes 
that the Indian is to be exterminated, either by 
the hand of man, or the judgments of God. 
We expect they will remain among us, and in- 
crease, rather than diminish. Neither are we 
displeased at the prospect ; for, in looking over 
the ground, we see plainly enough many good 
influences coming from them, and helping us in 

* P. 84. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. JJ 

our work. Their example as Christian workers 
is a good one. The love and good works, espe- 
cially from such a source, provoke to an in- 
crease of the same among us. The restraining 
influence of these Christianized Indians on evil 
white men is very great. Without the work 
done by these Indian churches, our border popu- 
lation would have an unlimited field for licen- 
tiousness and intemperance. Now there is a 
noticeable restraint, making the work of the 
home-missionary far easier. The good done 
in this way is increasing each year, as the 
work among the Indians is carried farther along, 
and even beyond the frontier. The sense of 
security is increased. The Christian Indians 
are a protection far more effective than any num- 
ber of troops. No hostile bands could by any 
possibility get through this cordon of Christian 
fortresses before the alarm was given. The fact 
that there is this barrier in the way prevents all 
attempts ; and so we till our farms, and sleep, 
without a thought of fear." 

7* 



78 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

The Sandwich-Islanders and the South-Sea- 
Islanders, who, fifty years ago, were savages and 
cannibals of the wildest, lowest, and most de- 
graded sort, and who, to the human eye, gave 
absolutely no hope of improvement, or prospect 
of any good, have, within less than half a centu- 
ry, been changed into peaceful and virtuous and 
industrious people, with homes and schools and 
laws. This change has been wrought only 
through the preaching, by Christian missionaries, 
of the gospel of Christ. So obviously has the 
work been done by this agency alone, that, so 
far as I know, no attempt is ever made to claim 
it for any other. There are those who deprecia- 
ate the value, and deny the extent, of the changes 
themselves ; but this number steadily dimin- 
ishes before the overwhelming proof to the con- 
trary ; and the great fact of these stupendous 
changes, and their simple cause, demands the 
attention and the assent of the world. 

In 1820 the first Christian missionaries landed 
in the Sandwich Islands ; and in 1870 they 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 



79 



made their last report to the society and the 
churches which had sent them out ; the islands 
having ceased to be missionary ground, the 
inhabitants having ceased to be heathen, and 
having become a Christian people, with self-sus- 
taining churches and pastors of their own, and 
having become, also, a new centre of light, 
whence the beams of the gospel are carried to 
distant islands still in darkness. The Sand- 
wich Islands, which fifty years ago knew noth- 
ing of the gospel, now send out and support 
thirteen of their own natives as missionaries of 
the gospel to the Marquesas and Micronesian 
Islands. " Having myself," says the venerable 
Dr. Anderson, " traversed all the Sandwich 
Islands five years ago, I do not hesitate to de- 
clare the United States to be no more entitled, 
as a whole, to the epithet of Christian than are 
those islands." * " At the fiftieth anniversary 
of the establishment of missions to the Hawaiian 
Islands, the principal orator was a man who in 

* Foreign Missions, p. 225. 



8o 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



infancy had narrowly escaped death by being 
buried alive by his heathen mother. For an 
hour he held his audience in rapt attention, as, 
without a note before him, he rehearsed the tri- 
umphs of the gospel among his people ; the ora- 
tor himself, by his range of thought, his finished 
language, his graceful manner, his lofty Chris- 
tian sentiment, furnishing, in his own individual 
development, the finest illustration of his 
theme. ,, * 

In 1866 the Report of the London Missionary 
Society contained the following declaration : 
" Sixty years ago there was not a solitary native 
Christian in Polynesia : now it would be difficult 
to find a professed idolater in the islands of 
Eastern or Central Polynesia, where Christian 
missionaries have been established. The hideous 
rites of their forefathers have ceased to be prac- 
tised. Their heathen legends and war-songs are 
forgotten. Their cruel and desolating tribal 

* Rev. Dr. N. G. Clark's paper on the Developing Power 
of the Gospel. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 



8l 



wars, which were rapidly destroying the popula- 
tion, appear to be at an end. They are gathered 
together in peaceful village communities. They 
live under recognized codes of laws. They are 
constructing roads, cultivating their fertile lands, 
and engaging in commerce. On the return of 
the sabbath, a very large proportion of the popu- 
lation attend the worship of God ; and, in some 
instances, more than half the adult population 
are recognized members of Christian churches. 
They educate their children, endeavoring to 
train them for usefulness in after-life. They 
sustain their native ministers, and send their 
noblest sons as missionaries to the heathen 
lands which lie farther west. There may not be 
the culture, the wealth, the refinement, of the 
older lands of Christendom (such things are 
the slow growth of ages) ; but these lands must 
no longer be regarded as a part of heathendom. 
In God's faithfulness and mercy, they have been 
won from the domains of heathendom, and have 
been added to the domains of Christendom." * 
* Quoted in Anderson's Foreign Missions, p. 227. 



82 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



In the Fiji Islands, numbering a population 
of two hundred thousand, the Wesleyan mission- 
aries began their work in 1835. The people were 
then all cannibals. Now * nearly a hundred and 
forty thousand regularly attend church on the 
sabbath. There are 25,468 church-members in 
full communion, and 4,450 on probation. There 
are 946 native preachers. There are 1,282 day 
schools, attended by 45,792 children. The 
barbarities, the crimes, the vices, of their heath- 
enism, have changed to an equal degree. " An 
English naval officer, speaking lately of a reli- 
gious service he attended on one of these islands, 
says, ' I was very much impressed by the scene 
before me. Only fifteen years before, every man 
I saw was a cannibal. Close to me sat the old 
chief, Bible in hand, and spectacles on forehead, 
who was, twenty years back, one of the most san- 
guinary and ferocious of this terrible land ; and 
within twenty yards of me was the site of the 
fatal oven, with the tree still standing, covered 

* Wesleyan Miss. Rep., 1874. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 83 



with the notches that marked each new vic- 
tim.'" * 

If we find difficulties in estimating the full 
magnitude of this change, we need only to pass 
to islands still farther to the south-west, where 
Christian missions have not yet penetrated, 
where the natives still devour one another, and 
the darkness of unbroken heathenism still waits 
for the light of the gospel to drive it away. 

Christian missions began in Madagascar in 
1820. The then reigning king welcomed them ; 
but upon his death, eight years after, his Pagan 
queen, who succeeded him, began a bitter oppo- 
sition to them and their work, which grew to the 
most ferocious persecution. Every missionary 
was driven out of the land, and the attempt made 
to put every Christian convert to death. Bar- 
barities and tortures, the like of which modern 
history does not elsewhere reveal, were employed 
in the work of extermination. The native Chris- 
tians were fined and imprisoned, and loaded with 

* Dr. Anderson, p. 229. 



8 4 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



chains, and sold into slavery. They were poi- 
soned and stoned and speared to death. They 
were hanged and burned at the stake, and cruci- 
fied, and pitched over lofty precipices ; but the 
blood of the martyrs here, as in Tertullian's 
time, was the seed of the church. Through all 
the fiery storm, the word of God grew mightily, 
and prevailed. Though hardly fifty native 
Christians were found in the island when the 
persecution began, and though it is estimated 
that over two thousand suffered martyrdom for 
their faith during its continuance, yet at its close, 
twenty-five years afterwards, five thousand 
Christian disciples were found ready, if need be, 
to seal with their life their faith in their Lord. 
Since 1861, when the fierce queen died, and the 
persecution ceased, the missionaries have re- 
turned ; Christian preaching has not only been 
permitted, but is welcomed, by the government ; 
and there are now more than tjyenty-five hundred 
native preachers of the gosp^Tand forty thou- 
sand communicants in Christian churches, in 
Madagascar. 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 85 

To all these might be added copious instances 
from Sierra Leone, from the Zulus and Caffres 
and Karens, from the Sonthals and other abo- 
riginal tribes of India, to show the actual power 
of the gospel to elevate and transform the lowest 
and most degraded of human kind. Before our 
own eyes at the present day, if we only will but 
see, there is actually taking place such a trans- 
formation in the character and condition of wild 
and savage men, by the preaching of the gospel 
alone, which justifies its claim to be the all- 
sufficient remedy for human sin and woe. What 
neither commerce, nor the arts of civilization, 
nor education, nor the teaching of morality, nor 
systems of natural religion, singly or combined, 
have been able to accomplish, the gospel alone 
is showing itself sufficient to secure ; and com- 
merce and arts and education and virtue follow 
in its train, as the day from the rising of the 
sun. It does not increase our sense of the can- 
dor or the clear knowledge of those, who, in the 
face of facts like these, can doubt the power of 
8 



86 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



the gospel, or ignore the blessings of Christian 
missions. 

But it may be said, that the results thus far 
noted have been wrought upon savages ; and it 
does not yet appear that the gospel is equally 
adapted to improve the condition of the more 
advanced and partially-civilized, though still 
Pagan, nations of the globe. If it be granted 
that cannibals and savages can be brought to a 
state of peace and social order by the gospel, is 
it equally true that no other agency is necessary 
to reach those who already occupy a plane of 
considerable culture, with commerce and arts 
and laws already possessed, but who are still 
idolaters, and still sunk in the sensualitv and 
moral corruption of the heathen ? Has the gos- 
pel any thing like such power with the Japanese 
and Chinese and Hindus, as it has shown over 
North-American Indians and the savage island- 
ers of the Pacific, and the wild and degraded 
denizens of Africa and Madagascar ? 

The earliest triumphs of the gospel were not 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 



87 



over barbarians. Christianity was brought face 
to face, at the outset, with Greek and Roman 
civilization and culture. It achieved its first 
victories in the high places of refinement, in 
cities and schools. Those who did not at first 
receive it were those who did not live in cities, 
who were outside the circles of culture, the 
rude dwellers on the heath and in hamlets, 
whom our words " heathen" and " pagan" origi- 
nally and literally described. It is true these 
victories were not won without a struggle ; but 
they were won. Christianity fearlessly entered 
upon the struggle, and fought it out until the 
learning and art and culture and civilization, 
which were all arrayed in hostility to it, were 
subdued, and henceforth made to minister to its 
progress. There is no reason to expect any dif- 
ferent results at the present day ; neither are 
the results different. The civilization of the 
Japanese, the Chinese, and the Hindus, is far 
inferior to that of the Greek and Roman world ; 
but Christianity is actually showing itself as 



88 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



able to change and control the one, as it was the 
other. " I believe/ ' said Lord Lawrence, vice- 
roy of India, " notwithstanding all that the Eng- 
lish people have done to benefit that country, 
the missionaries have done more than all other 
agencies combined." Says Sir Bartle Frere, gov- 
ernor of Bombay, " I speak simply as to matters 
of experience and observation, and not of 
opinion, just as a Roman prefect might have 
reported to Trajan or the Antonines ; and I 
assure you, that, whatever you may be told to 
the contrary, the teaching of Christianity among 
a hundred and sixty millions of civilized, indus- 
trious Hindus and Mohammedans in India, 
is effecting changes, moral, social, and political, 
which, for extent and rapidity of effect, are far 
more extraordinary than any thing you or your 
fathers have witnessed in modern Europe." 
Says Sir Donald McLeod, lieutenant-governor 
of the Punjaub, "In many places an impression 
prevails, that the missions have not produced 
results adequate to the efforts which have been 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 89 



made ; but I trust enough has been said to 
prove that there is no real foundation for this 
impression, and those who hold such opinions 
know but little of the reality." 

In the closing week of 1872, a missionary- 
conference was held at Allahabad, India, com- 
posed of one hundred and thirty-six members, 
— Baptists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, 
Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Re- 
formed, from America, England, Scotland, Ire- 
land, Germany, Norway, and India, — in which 
the present condition and prospects of mission- 
ary work in India were carefully considered. I 
was told by a member of the conference, that, 
when the reports from the different societies 
and missions were brought in, a sentiment of 
surprise was blended with the thanksgiving at 
the results wrought. No one seems to have 
been prepared for the exhibition of the grand 
extent and power of missionary work in India. 
In 1862 there were 138,731 native Christians 
in the whole of India. In 1872 there were 



9Q 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



224,161, an increase of over eighty-five thou- 
sand in ten years, or at the rate of sixty-one 
per cent. This is not only a larger absolute 
gain, but larger, also, proportionally, showing a 
more rapid growth in missionary operations 
and their results, during the last ten years, than 
at any similar period before. While the largest 
portion of this increase is from persons of low 
caste, and from the aboriginal tribes, one-fourth 
of it, or more than twenty thousand of the con- 
verts during the last ten years, are from pure 
Hindus of high caste. 

Besides these direct results, every thoughtful 
observer agrees that the influence of Christian 
missions has indisputably changed the opinions 
and conduct of the natives of India, both edu- 
cated and uneducated, to a degree most remarka- 
ble, and which gives promise of consequences 
equally grand and benign. Rev. M. A. Sher- 
ring of Benares, in a carefully-prepared paper 
read before the Allahabad Conference, full of 
accurate information of the present state and 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 9 1 

prospects of missionary work in India, declares 
that "there are great processes of change and 
reformation, which are secretly undermining the 
vast fabric of Hindu superstition, and which 
alone, were there no others, and were there 
not a single Hindu yet converted to the Chris- 
tian faith, would stamp the great humanizing 
work in which the missionaries are engaged, 
as one of the most noble and beneficent the 
world ever saw." * 

It is only a very few years since China was 
opened to the preaching of the gospel ; but 
Christian missions have been established in 
forty walled cities, and three hundred and sixty 
villages ; over four hundred native preachers 
have been raised up; and while, in 1868, there 
were four thousand Chinese members of Chris- 
tian churches, this number has grown, in 1873,- 
to eight thousand, a rate of increase which the 
latest intelligence from China gives promise of 
still further augmenting. 

* Proceedings of the Allahabad Conference, p. 4S0. 



92 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



In Japan the commencement of missions has 
been still more recent, but their progress has 
not been slow ; and no one can note the interest 
of the Japanese in the gospel, and the changed 
condition and life of those who have found in it 
the way of salvation, without the strongest ex- 
pectation, that it will not only be preached 
through the whole empire, but that it will be 
found there, as everywhere, glad tidings of great 
joy. 

The gospel has not died out, nor lost aught 
of its power. Through the eighteen Christian 
centuries in which it has been preached, it 
has not grown old, nor weak, nor weary. It 
is working to-day, in Christian and unchristian 
lands, with as much vigor, and with as mighty 
results, as in the great days of its first proc- 
lamation. The triumphs actually achieved in 
our own time by the Christian Church are 
equal to any the Church has ever achieved. 
Christianity places herself side by side with 
all other agencies for the salvation of the 



THE ADEQUACY OF THE GOSPEL. 



93 



world, and calmly challenges a comparison of 
their success with her own. By the light of 
the actual results, it becomes clear that the 
gospel of Jesus Christ " is the power of God 
unto salvation ; unto the jew first, and also unto 
the Greek." * 

* Rom. i. 1 6, 



FOURTH LECTURE. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 

Just at this point a difficulty arises, which 
some minds feel to be grave. If we tan answer 
all the objections to missions which an unbe- 
liever can urge, and sufficiently demonstrate the 
power of the gospel and the glory of the gospel, 
in contrast with all other agencies, for the good 
of man, which it is in our power to use, there 
are still many profound Christian believers who 
doubt the expediency and the efficiency of mis- 
sions, on the ground that these are man's work, 
while the work of the world's conversion must 
be wholly divine. They argue from prophecy 
that as the stone which smote the image, and 
became a great mountain, and filled the whole 
earth, was cut out of the mountain without hands, 

94 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 95 



so the kingdom which shall break in pieces and 
consume all other kingdoms, and shall never be 
destroyed, but shall stand forever, must be one 
which the God of heaven alone must set up. * 
The Church which hopes to bring about the 
victory of her Lord's kingdom upon earth by 
her own endeavors will not only fail of such a 
consummation, which is beyond all her powers, 
but assuredly loses thus her own strength and 
salvation. " For thus saith the Lord God, the 
Holy One of Israel : In returning and rest shall 
ye be saved ; in quietness and confidence shall 
be your strength."! We are pointed to prophe- 
cies which seem to assure us that it is the suf- 
fering Church which is to reign. It is the eye 
that has watched, and the soul that has waited, 
for the coming of the Lord, which shall see 
" death swallowed up in victory," and which 
shall exclaim, " Lo, this is our God ; we have 
waited for him, and he will save us : this is the 
Lord ; we have waited for him, we will be glad 
and rejoice in his salvation." $ 

* Dan. ii. t Isa. xxx. 15. t Isa. xxv. 9. 



9 6 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Therefore, it is argued, " Our strength is to 
sit still." We are not to work, but to wait for 
the Lord's coming. All our work is worthless. 
His advent alone can bring the wished-for good. 
This will be in his own good time, which we 
cannot hasten ; and it will be with the glory of 
his all-sufficient power, which none of our 
efforts can increase. He will come with the 
power of a conqueror, and the terribleness of a 
destroyer, bringing vengeance and recompense 
to his enemies. The nations are to be dashed to 
pieces by him, like a potter's vessel. " He shall 
break them with a rod of iron." * "A fire shall 
devour before him, and it shall be very tempest- 
uous round about him." f " And the loftiness 
of man shall be bowed down, and the haughti- 
ness of men shall be made low ; and the Lord 
alone shall be exalted in that day. And they 
shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the 
caves of the earth, for fear of the Lord, and for 
the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to 
* Ps. ii. 9. t Ps. 1. 3. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 97 



shake terribly the earth." " Strengthen ye the 
weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say 
to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, 
fear not ; behold, your God will come with ven- 
geance, even God with a recompense, he will 
come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind 
shall be opened, and the of ears the deaf shall 
be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as 
an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing ; 
for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and 
streams in the desert. > . . Then shall the ran- 
somed of the Lord return, and come to Zion 
with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads : 
they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow 
and sighing shall flee away." * 

All this is interpreted to mean, that we are not 
to hope for the conversion of the world from any 
increase of our present means of evangelizing 
the nations, nor, indeed, from any exercise of 
human means at all, but only " by a stupendous 
display of divine wrath upon all the apostate 

* Isa. xxxv. 

9 



9 8 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



and ungodly." * " The kingdom and Universal 
Church are to be established, not by gradual con- 
version or by conversion more or less rapid under 
this dispensation, but by the personal advent of 
our Lord himself and all the remarkable events 
that accompany it." f " The rectifying that 
comes at last is not by mercy, but by judgment ; 
not by the sowing of grace, but by the sickle of 
vengeance ; not by an extension of the gospel, 
the labors of ministers, or any gracious instru- 
mentality now at work, but by the angels of God, 
who are to accompany the Son of man at his 
second advent. It will consist not in re-sowing, 
but in reaping, the field." J 

Of course, from all this it follows that mis- 
sionary movements are a mistake, and ought to 
be abandoned. And this ground is actually and 
soberly taken. Recall your missionaries. Give 
up all these human agencies. " This is not the 

* Elem. of Proph. Inter., p. 228. 

t Ogilvy's Premillennial Advent, p. 217. 

J McNeile's Priest upon his Throne, p. 96. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 99 



dispensation for converting the world. Nothing 
permanent will be done till the King come him- 
self." " To encourage the hope that the gospel, 
as now proclaimed in the world, will be the 
instrument of final success, is simply to feed 
the Church upon unauthorized speculations." 
"The world is not growing better, but worse, 
under all human efforts. The darkness around 
us is not being pierced by the light, but is grow- 
ing more dense and appalling ; and this state of 
things will continue on to the end. The king- 
dom of Christ is to be firmly established only 
at his second coming. The coming of the Lord 
in all his glory, and the setting-up of his 
kingdom, are to be contemporaneous. When 
the comparatively small number of the elect 
shall have been gathered in under this dispensa- 
tion, then is the sign to appear in the heavens ; 
and the power of Christ in a new moral system 
is to complete what his grace has failed to 
accomplish in this." 

This, if I understand it, is a fair statement of 



100 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



the millennarian theory of missions and the con- 
version of the world ; and I have given it this 
full representation, because of the prominence 
with which, in certain quarters, it is now held. 
So startling a position, so gravely taken by such 
careful students and devout believers of the 
Bible, needs our close attention. Do the sacred 
Scriptures warrant any such conclusion ? Are 
we, on a fair interpretation of the Bible, to stop 
short in our missionary enterprise, and confess 
our mistake ? or do the Scriptures urge us for- 
ward in the work of preaching the gospel to the 
nations ? and do they encourage the hope of the 
world's conversion in this way ? 

This much is clear at the outset, and is every- 
where admitted to be the teaching of Scripture, 
— the present corruption and alienation of men 
from God is to cease ; the opposition to God's 
sovereignty now existing is in some way to 
be overcome; the world is to be converted. 
" All the ends of the world shall remember and 
turn unto the Lord ; and all the kindreds of the 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. IOI 



nations shall worship before thee/' * " For the 
earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the 
glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." f 
"For from the rising of the sun even unto the 
going down of the same, my name shall be great 
among the Gentiles ; and in every place incense 
shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offer- 
ing : for my name shall be great among the 
heathen, saith the Lord of hosts." % These are 
too clear to be mistaken ; but the question still 
returns, By whom, and in what way, shall this 
great change be wrought ? 

It is certainly clear from the Scriptures that 
the efficient agent in the work is God himself. 
The individual heart, we are clearly taught, is 
renewed only by a divine power. It is to God 
that the prayer is to be offered, Create in me 
a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within 
me.§ It is God alone who can say, I will give 
unto them a new heart. || 



* Ps. xxii. 27. 
t Hab. ii. 14. 



I Mai. i. 11. 
§ Ps. li. 10. 



|| Ezek. xxxvi. 26. 



9* 



102 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



" As many as received him, to them gave he 
power to become the sons of God, even to them 
that believe on his name ; which were born, not 
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
will of man, but of God." * "For we are his 
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good 
works, which God hath before ordained that we 
should walk in them/' f " So then it is not of 
him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but 
of God that showeth mercy." $ " Not by works 
of righteousness which we have done, but 
according to his mercy he saved us, by the 
washing of regeneration, and renewing of the 
Holy Ghost. ,, § " Who then is Paul, and who is 
Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, 
even as the Lord gave to every man ? I have 
planted, Apollos watered ; but God gave the 
increase." || 

The heart is the chaos formless and void 
until the Spirit of God broodeth upon it ; and 

* John i. 12, 13. t Eph. ii. 10. J Rom. ix. 16. 
§ Tit. iii. 5. || 1 Cor. iii. 5, 6. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. IO3 



darkness is upon the face of its depths until 
God saith, Let there be light. But as the cor- 
ruption of society is only the outgrowth and the 
exhibition of the corruption of the heart, and as 
all social changes only represent, and are pro- 
duced by, changes in individual character, so the 
conversion of the world is only the conversion 
of individual souls ; and the efficient agent in it, 
therefore, must be God alone. But the Bible 
does not leave us to a mere inference of this 
sort. It abounds in direct statements which 
declare the same. " Thy people shall be willing 
in the day of thy power." * " And I will break 
the bow and the sword and the battle out of the 
earth, and will make them to lie down safely/' f 
" Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will lift 
up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my 
standard to the people." $ "I the Lord will 
hasten it in his time."§ " And I will set my 
glory among the heathen, and all the heathen 
shall see my judgment that I have executed, 

* Ps. ex. 3. f Hos. ii. 18. t Isa. xlix. 22. § Isa. lx. 22. 



104 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



and my hand that I have laid upon them." * 
" Moreover I will make a covenant of peace 
with them ; and I will place them, and multiply 
them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of 
them forevermore. My tabernacle also shall be 
with them : yea, I will be their God, and they 
shall be my people/*' f 

The force of these teachings is admitted on 
all hands. Those who deny the peculiar inter- 
pretation which the millennarian doctrine puts 
upon such passages affirm as confidently as the 
millennarians themselves, that, all through the 
Bible, a divine power is seen to be necessary, 
and is declared to be the efficient agency in the 
conversion of souls, or the conversion of the 
world. But in what way is this power put 
forth ? Does it accompany the preaching of the 
gospel ? and is that the power of God unto sal- 
vation? Or is it, as the millennarians claim, 
through dire providences, through mighty con- 
vulsions of nature, through disasters, and devas- 

* Ezek. xxxix. 21. t Ezek. xxxvii. 26, 27. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 105 



tations of the nations, by fire, by famine, by 
pestilence, by the sword, that the kingdom and 
the greatness of the kingdom, under the whole 
heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints 
of the most high God ? 

It is doubtless true, that prophecy abounds 
in predictions of dire events, which, as terrible 
judgments of Jehovah, precede and accompany 
the final triumph of the Church. It is also 
true, that these events are powerful auxiliaries 
in the advancement of God's kingdom. " For 
when thy judgments are in the earth," says 
Isaiah, " the inhabitants of the world will learn 
righteousness. ,, * But it is equally true, that 
events prodigiously vast and terrible, in which 
a divine hand has been conspicuous, and which 
have mightily aided the progress of the Church, 
are occurring in our days, as they have occurred 
all through the Christian history ; and it is pos- 
sible, at least, that, among the great and terri- 
ble events which the Scriptures declare shall 

* Isa. xxvi. 9. 



io6 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



precede and prepare the way for the triumph of 
God's kingdom, some of these may be included. 
But a few years ago, there was brought to a 
close a gigantic rebellion in China ; and, during 
the twenty years of its continuance, a careful 
writer in "Fraser's Magazine " * estimates that it 
caused the death of two hundred millions of 
human beings ! The destruction of the Jews, 
the overthrow of the Western Roman empire, 
the rise of Mohammedanism and the extension 
of its power, the religious wars connected with 
the Reformation, the French Revolution, the 
conflict of Germany with France, and our own 
conflict with the slave-power, are events worthy 
of the most appalling descriptions of judgment 
and devastation which prophecy contains. They 
are events, too, which, like the things which hap- 
pened unto Paul, — things which seemed at first 
only dire,- — "have fallen out rather unto the fur- 
therance of the gospel." f There may be darker 
and more terrible occurrences in the future than 

* November, 1870. t Phil. i. 12. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. IOJ 



have yet taken place, and these may prepare 
the way for more conspicuous triumphs of the 
gospel than we have yet seen ; we may, perhaps, 
look for a nation to be born in a day, and the 
birth may be through a travail whose throes 
shall convulse the world : but what reason have 
we to expect that these events of the future, 
if of grander degree, shall differ in kind from 
those of the past, when, all along through the 
history of the Church, it has been the pillar of 
cloud and of fire in which the Leader of his 
people has gone before, and guided them unto 
the inheritance which he has promised and 
provided ? Through blood and terror, through 
darkness and sorrow, the Church has gained her 
victories, and enlarged the reign of peace and 
hope and light and joy. But, while this is true, 
we must remember that it is only the power of 
the truth which has first precipitated the con- 
flict ; and it is only by the manifestation of the 
same power, that the results of the conflict are 
the good we desire. " Think not that I am 



io8 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



come to send peace on earth : I came not to 
send peace, but a sword. For I am come to 
set a man at variance against his father, and the 
daughter against her mother, and the daughter- 
in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's 
foes shall be they of his own household." * 

It is the preaching of Christ's gospel, the 
gospel which proclaims peace, which brings out 
the opposition which exists, and brings on 
the struggle which is to be waged between the 
Church and the world : and it is only by the 
preaching of the same gospel that this opposi- 
tion is finally quelled, and the enemy of the 
truth becomes changed to a friend ; as it is the 
rising of the sun which calls forth the mists of 
the morning from the marshes and fens where 
the night has engendered them, and the upward 
progress and continued shining of the same sun 
which dissipates them again. This is the way 
in which the conversion of the world has taken 
place in the degree to which it has thus far pro- 

* Matt. x. 34-36. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. IO9 



gressed. Why should we expect any different 
procedure in the future ? Indeed, the prophe- 
- cies which seem to relate more particularly to 
the final and complete triumph of the Church 
are clearly susceptible of an interpretation which 
makes that triumph in the end to hinge, as it 
has done from the beginning, on the power of 
God's word, with the added power of his Spirit. 
Of Him who in righteousness doth judge and 
make war, w T hose eyes are as a flame of fire, and 
who is clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, 
whom the armies which were in heaven followed, 
and against whom the beast, and the kings of 
the earth, and their armies, were gathered to- 
gether to make war, it is said that " His name is 
called The Word of God;'* "And out of his 
mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he 
should smite the nations ; and he shall rule them 
with a rod of iron ; and he treadeth the wine- 
press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty 
God. . . . And the beast was taken, and with 

* Rev. xix. 

10 



no 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



him the false prophet that wrought miracles 
before him, with which he deceived them that 
had received the mark of the beast, and them 
that worshipped his image. . . . And the rem- 
nant were slain with the sword of him that sat 
upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of 
his mouth." * This sword — elsewhere f called 
the sword of the Spirit, the sword forged and 
furnished by the Spirit — is expressly termed 
the spoken word of God, $ which is quick and 
powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword. 
He who speaks this word, out of whose mouth 
this sword proceedeth, is the Logos, or Word, 
which was in the beginning with God, and 
which was God. Other prophetic utterances 
are in striking accord with this. He by whose 
coming " the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, 
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and 
the calf and the young lion and the fatling to- 
gether, and a little child shall lead them," " shall 
smite the earth with the rod of his mouth ; and 

* Rev. xix. f Eph. vi. 17. J /%/a. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. Ill 



with the breath of his lips shall he slay the 
wicked." * Again : it is said that " that Wicked 
one whom the Lord shall destroy with the 
brightness of his coming/' "he shall consume 
with the spirit of his mouth." f In the glorious 
Person whom John saw in the midst of the seven 
golden candlesticks, whose countenance was as 
the sun shineth in his strength, and who had in 
his right hand seven stars, the one mark, which, 
from its repetition, seems to have been most 
conspicuous was, that " out of his mouth went a 
sharp two-edged sword." J " To the angel of the 
church in Pergamos write : These things saith he 
who hath the sharp sword with two edges. . . . 
Repent ; or else I will come unto thee quickly, 
and will fight against them with the sword of 
my mouth." § We need to be most humble and 
reverent in our interpretation of the grand sym- 
bols of prophecy, — symbols so grand, that they 
often dwarf to insignificance all our interpreta- 
tions of them ; but what other meaning seems 

* Isa. xi. f 2 Thess. ii. 8. J Rev. i. 16. § Ibid. ii. 12, 16. 



112 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



so befitting the majestic imagery here before us, 
as that which also accords with what we have 
seen to be true ever since Christ gave his last 
commission to his disciples, and which points us 
to the preaching of the gospel, with the power 
of the Holy Ghost, as the means through which 
the nations are to be subdued ? 

These two agencies fitly go together, and are 
continually associated in the Bible and in the 
history of the Church. To the dry bones which 
lay in the valley of vision, the prophet was 
commanded to prophesy, and proclaim the word 
of the Lord ; and then, as the flesh came upon 
them, but without the breath of life, he was 
commanded to prophesy again : " Thus saith the 
Lord God ; Come from the four winds, O breath, 
and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. 
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the 
breath came into them, and they lived, and stood 
up upon their feet, an exceeding great army." * 
Though this figure is expressly referred to the 

* Ezek. xxxvii. 9, 10. 



THE MILLENNARTAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. I 1 3 



house of Israel, as typifying their restoration 
and salvation, the promise is elsewhere dis- 
tinctly made : " I will pour out my Spirit upon 
all flesh ; " * and the fulfilment of this promise 
is claimed by Peter, when, upon the day of Pen- 
tecost, the disciples were filled with the Holy 
Ghost, and began to preach with such power, 
through the demonstration of the Spirit, that 
there were added to them that same day three 
thousand souls. The preaching of the gospel is 
through human agency; but the Divine Spirit 
accompanies it, and makes it efficacious. The 
preaching of the gospel is the preaching of 
God's word; and thus there is in it a divine ele- 
ment and power, even though uttered by human 
lips. The divine agency is all conspicuous in 
the w r ork. Except the Lord build the house, 
they labor in vain that build it. Except the 
Lord keep the city, the watchman laboreth in 
vain. God is the efficient author of regener- 
ation, the author and finisher of our faith: 

* Joel ii. 28. 

10* 



U4 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



not a step can be taken in the world's conver- 
sion without him. The praise of it, and the 
glory, are altogether his. But, in that organic 
fellowship of the saints which his kingdom is to 
actualize among men, human hearts are knit 
together in love and sympathy by being co- 
workers together with him. He associates their 
agency with his own : " Go ye into all the world, 
and preach my gospel to every creature. " And, 
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
the world." The association of this commission 
with this promise teaches us what the history 
of the Church has continually illustrated, that 
Christ's presence in and with his disciples ac- 
companies their preaching of his gospel. He is 
with and in them as a living inspiration in their 
obedience to his command. Their obedience 
merits nothing. The obedience, indeed, follows, 
and neither precedes nor procures, the inspira- 
tion. But in that mysterious fellowship of the 
Christian disciple with his Lord, wherein we 
are united to him as the branches are united 



THE MILLEXXARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. I 1 5 



to the vine, though it is the life of the vine 
which gives all their vigor and growth to the 
branches, yet the vigor and growth of the 
branches draw more and more from the life- 
sustaining power of the vine ; and the fulness 
which they receive from it, therefore, is propor- 
tioned to the fulness with which they respond 
to its quickening influence. Every obedience 
of the disciple is from some prior inspiration 
of his Lord ; but every obedience draws in 
some fresh inspiration, which is to him a closer 
fellowship, and which furnishes him for some 
higher service. The work which we do in God's 
kingdom, he requires of us not so much for his 
sake as for ours. It is not he who needs it, but 
ourselves. We do not grow, we cannot live, save 
in obedience to him. The river of the water of 
our life, clear as crystal, proceedeth only from 
his throne.* His commandments are benedic- 
tions ; and obedience to them is the enlargement 
of our capacity, and the opening of deeper 

* Rev. xxii. 1. 



ii6 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



channels through which his blessings can flow 
upon us, and therefore they are enjoined. The 
works of holy love to which his love incites us 
mark steps of progress in the spiritual life ; but 
the solemn truth is clear, alike from the Chris- 
tian experience and from the Bible, that failure 
in these works marks not a stationary stage, but 
steps of retrogression. (i Faith, if it hath not 
works, is dead, being alone. . . For as the body 
without the spirit is dead, so faith without works 
is dead also." * The Church gains strength, 
enlargement, purity, only as she does her Lord's 
will, only as she associates herself with him in 
the great work of seeking and saving the lost 
for which he came. It is not simply, therefore, 
a question for the Church, whether missions are 
a hopeful means for the salvation of the world, 
her own salvation is intimately involved in the 
missionary cause. Fancying that she is the 
elect, with no mission to work for the extension 
of his kingdom, but only to wait till he shall 

* James ii. 17, 26. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. I I J 



appear, she has reason to look well to her own 
state, lest she herself become a reprobate and a 
castaway. 

When the proposition was before the Massa- 
chusetts Senate to incorporate the American 
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 
and the objection was made, that we had so little 
religion at home, that we could not afford to 
send any abroad ; it was replied, that religion 
was a commodity of which the more we exported, 
the more we had left behind. The answer was 
a sound one : it has already been justified by 
the facts. Those branches of the Church which 
are strongest at home are those which are most 
efficient in carrying the gospel abroad. The 
increase of grace to ourselves comes from the 
diffusion of that which we possess. " There is 
that scattereth, and yet increaseth ; and there is 
that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tend- 
eth to poverty." * The light ceaseth to be 
light when it ceaseth to shine. "Ye are the 

* Prov. xi. 24. 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



light of the world. . . . Neither do men light 
a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a 
candlestick ; and it giveth light unto all that are 
in the house." * 

The failure of the Church in many parts of 
the Christian world to engage in the work of 
evangelizing the nations has resulted in spiritual 
apathy and loss of power. Indifference within 
the Church to the conversion of the world begets 
infidelity outside, and overwhelms the Church 
with reproaches which she has no means to 
repel. The Church cannot stand still as long as 
there is any progress for her to make ; and she 
may never stay at home till her home embraces 
the world. Some years since, a home mission- 
ary in Oregon wrote to the East, " Our purpose 
is, to begin to think and feel and act for the 
world, and then we shall be aroused to act for 
our country and for ourselves. He who works 
well in the gospel must work on the world plan 
of the gospel." The truth of this view is seen 

* Matt. v. 14, 15. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. lig 



from the whole experience of the Church ever 
since she began to offer the prayer of the 
Psalmist, " God be merciful unto us, and bless 
us, . . . that thy way may be known upon earth, 
and thy saving health among all nations." * 

The work of missions is worth to the Church 
not only all that it has cost, but infinitely more. 
And, in saying this, I do not forget what it has 
cost. I remember the sainted ones of whom 
the world was not worthy, whose lives have been 
consumed in this sacred cause. I remember 
their sacrifices, the burdens and toils to which 
they have submitted, constrained by their love 
of Christ and their zeal for his kingdom. But 
when I think of the energy and patience and 
faith, the self-forgetfulness and self-devotion, 
which the Church has shown in her missionary 
work, precious as is the offering, I cannot but 
feel that the Church is inexpressibly richer for 
the grace which has permitted her to render it. 
How her faith has been strengthened in the 
* Ps. lxvii. i, 2. 



120 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



process ! How her love for Christ, and for souls 
whom Christ has loved, has thereby deepened, 
and grown more absorbing ! How Christian 
hearts have thus been knit together, revealing, 
as in no other way, the oneness of the members 
of Christ's body with each other and with their 
ever-living Head ! What new views of the 
glory of Christ, and the all-sufficiency of his 
atonement, and the power of his renewing 
grace, have thus been beheld by the Church, and 
disclosed to the world ! What an irrefutable 
answer to all infidelity, what a triumphant affir- 
mation of her divine origin and claims, does the 
Church possess in these annals of the patience 
and the faith of her saints ! " He that goeth 
forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall 
doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing 
his sheaves with him." * The Church is richer, 
incalculably richer, by all her sacrifices. The 
true economy of Christian labor is its widest 
possible diffusion. 

* Ps. cxxvi. 6. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 121 

The missionary spirit is the normal develop- 
ment of the Christian life. As it grows, the 
Church grows in purity and power and all 
Christian efficiency. That the work of missions 
does not diminish the work of the Christian 
laborer at home, but that this is rendered easier 
and far more efficient through the mighty reflex 
influence which comes from the Christian labor- 
ers abroad, our own churches have too clear 
evidence to doubt. Not only do the great be- 
nevolent societies through whose agency Amer- 
ican Christians are working with such success 
— the Sunday School Union, the Tract Society, 
the Education Society, the Bible Society, the 
Seaman's Friend Society, the Home Missionary 
Society — follow promptly, in the order of time, 
the organization of the American Board of 
Commissioners for Foreign Missions ; but the 
impulse to the foreign missionary work was 
really the source of all these other enterprises. 
And that unprecedented enlargement of the 
Church which the present century has disclosed 
ii 



122 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



within our own borders — by which, notwith- 
standing our great foreign immigration, and our 
acquisition of Texas and California and New 
Mexico, the membership of our Protestant evan- 
gelical churches has increased since 1800 two and 
a half times faster than the population — is most 
interestingly connected with this growing mis- 
sionary spirit, which has been continually stimu- 
lating our activity at home, and continually 
receiving from this activity a fresh increase for 
itself in return. 

That the evangelization of the nations is not 
a hopeless undertaking, as our millennarian 
brethren claim, nor one which the Church is not 
competent to accomplish speedily, is quite clear 
from the present condition and recent history of 
missions. The history of moderns missions 
does not yet reach three-fourths of a century. 
In 1790 only two Protestant missionary societies 
were in existence, — the Society of the Mora- 
vians, and that for the Propagation of the Gospel 
in Foreign Parts, neither of which dates farther 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 1 23 



back than earlier in that century. William 
Carey, a Baptist clergyman, born at Nottingham, 
Eng., 1 76 1, is properly termed the pioneer of 
modern missions. But when he first proposed, 
at a ministers' meeting of which he was a 
member, as a topic of discussion, the duty of 
Christians to attempt the spread of the gospel 
among heathen ' nations, the venerable Dr. 
Ryland, presiding officer of the meeting, re- 
ceived the proposition with astonishment and 
indignation. " Young man, sit down," said he. 
" When God pleases to convert the heathen, he 
will do it without your aid or mine." There 
was only one minister in London, the venerable 
John Newton, from whom Carey found the 
least sympathy. When, in 1796, two overtures 
in behalf of foreign missions were laid before 
the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 
the scheme was denounced as "his-hlv dangerous 
to the good order of society," and was rejected 
mainly on the ground " that it was improper and 
absurd to propagate the gospel abroad, while 



124 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



there remained a single individual at home 
without the means of religious knowledge." 

When those earnest Christian students in 
Williams College, into whose hearts there was 
breathed a new sense of duty in behalf of the 
world's conversion, formed themselves into a 
society, whose object they declared to be " to 
effect in the persons of its members a mission 
or missions to the heathen," so strongly was 
public opinion opposed to such an undertaking, 
that lest they should be thought rashly impru- 
dent, and so should injure the cause they wished 
to promote, they adopted as Article Four of 
their organization, that "the existence of this 
society shall be kept secret." Having before us 
such displays of missionary activity and zeal as 
characterize the present time, with thirty-three 
Protestant societies in Europe, and fifteen in 
America, sending out more than eighteen hun- 
dred foreign missionaries, sustaining fourteen 
thousand Christian laborers in foreign fields, all 
told, and contributing to their support more than 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 12$ 

five million dollars per year, the whole Christian 
Church thrilled and kindled to so large a degree 
with the purpose to evangelize the world, we 
find it difficult, almost impossible, to imagine 
the indifference and the opposition to the cause 
of missions only seventy years ago. There are 
now, in different parts of the w T orld, more than 
fifteen hundred Bible societies, all of which have 
been organized since 1804, a ^ having for their 
sole aim to put these glad tidings of great joy 
in the languages and the hands of all people. 
These societies have issued, within the last 
seventy years, more than a hundred and thirty- 
five million copies of the Sacred Word, in lan- 
guages spoken by the vast majority of mankind. 
Two of these societies alone — the British and 
Foreign and the American Bible Society — are 
printing now and circulating, on an average, over 
ten thousand copies of the Scriptures per day, 
or three millions a Year, in various tongues, — all 
this, besides the multitudes of copies published 

by private firms and other agencies. Never, not 
11* 



126 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



even in apostolic times, has the Church exercised 
any thing like such zeal and energy for the con- 
version of the world as now ; and never has there 
been an approach to such efficiency of results as 
the present century reveals. 

There were, probably, not twenty versions of 
the Scriptures, all told, at the' end of the first 
thousand years of the Christian era : now there 
are two hundred and seventy-four. I have re- 
cently read in "The Indian Evangelical Review' ' * 
an estimate by which it appears, that, at the end 
of the first Christian century, there were not half 
as many Christians on the globe as are found 
to-day in India from less than a hundred years 
of missionary effort. In Madagascar alone, a 
nation of five millions of people, there has been 
wrought, in the last fifty years, as complete a 
revolution as was found in the Roman empire 
down to the time of Constantine. Missionary 
efforts have never been so numerous or so 
earnest, and their numerical successes never so 

* Vol. i. No. 2, p. 140. 



THE MILLENNARIAN THEORY OF MISSIONS. 127 



great, as at the present time. While we must 
not take to ourselves any self-gratulation for 
this ; while it behooves the Church to be hum- 
ble, and to .recognize the source of all this 
movement, as found alone in the quickening in- 
spiration of her Lord, — it does become her to 
welcome with gratitude the fruits of this inspi- 
ration, and find in it, also, new zeal for larger 
efforts, and new hope for grander success. The 
Church, therefore, which withdraws from mis- 
sionary operations, and waits for some millennial 
advent of her Lord, is one whose eyes are 
holden, like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, 
not knowing that the Lord is verily risen, has 
already come, and is even now walking by their 
side. Oh for the opened eye to behold him, and 
the kindling inspiration which the knowledge of 
his presence gives ! 



FIFTH LECTURE. 



THE TRUE METHOD OF MISSIONARY OPERATIONS. 

But if it be true that Christian influences 
are the only, and, at the same time, the all-suf- 
ficient means for the world's conversion, there 
may still be a question as to the best method of 
employing these. There is a broad distinction 
between the Romish and the Protestant method 
of carrying Christianity to the nations, and also 
an important difference in the actual procedure 
among Protestants themselves. Protestantism 
teaches that the soul, only by a living faith in 
Christ, becomes a member of the Church ; while 
the doctrine of Romanism always has been that 
the Church is first, and that union with it pre- 
cedes, and is in order to, any union with Christ. 

Hence the Romish method of missions is to 
128 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



129 



convey Christianity to the heathen world by 
establishing there the forms and ordinances of 
the Romish Church. It is not by the preaching 
of Christ and the cross, but by baptism and 
penance and priestly rites, that Romanism 
expects to save the world. It carries with it, 
to a new field, precisely the same agencies 
which it maintains where it has been longest 
known. As Cardinal Wiseman has said, " We 
give not the word of God indiscriminately to all, 
because God himself has not so given it. We 
do not permit the indiscriminate and undirected 
use of the Bible, because God has not given to 
his Church the instinct to do so ; " * as Pope 
Gregory VII. declared, that "it is pleasing to 
Almighty God that his sacred worship should 
be performed in an unknown tongue, in order 
that the whole world, and especially the most 
simple, may not be able to understand it;" f 
and as this has been the view of Rome all 
along, — we should not expect the Bible and 

* Bib. Sac, April, i860, art. v. f Ibid. 



130 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



spiritual agencies to be foremost in Romish mis- 
sions. As Romanism always seeks to maintain 
itself by formal observances, by authority, by 
physical or secular power, we are not surprised 
to find that it was a maxim of Francis Xavier, 
"that missionaries without muskets do never 
make converts to any purpose ; " the truth of 
which maxim, another missionary Jesuit tells 
us, " is confirmed by universal experience ; for 
neither in the Brazils, Peru, Mexico, Florida, the 
Philippines, or Molucca, have any conversions 
been made without the help of the secular 
powers." * Processions, much pageantry, the 
representation of symbols, appeals to the eye 
rather than to the ear, and especially the ad- 
ministration of baptism, are, besides the secular 
power, the chief agencies employed in Romish 
missions. " I have made Christians," f was 
Xavier's favorite expression when he had bap- 
tized infants, or taught adults to repeat the pre- 
scribed formularies. To baptize infants, where- 

* Venn's Life of Xavier, p. 528. f Venn, p. 38. 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



131 



ever it could be done, and to regard, as was 
Xavier's custom, ail under fourteen years of age 
as infants, and fit subjects for the rite ; to pur- 
chase the opportunity for baptism by bribes, or 
to force it by terror or physical power, "driv- 
ing them to baptism," in the words of one Jesuit 
writer, " as beasts are driven to the water," * — 
is the Romish method of saving souls. 

The annals of the Society for the Propaga- 
tion of the Faith report baptisms by the hun- 
dred thousand in a single year, of children of 
Pagans in danger of death. " By means of four 
pounds given to our baptizers," writes the apos- 
tolic vicar from China, " we can regenerate three 
or four hundred children, more or less, two-thirds 
of whom go almost immediately to heaven. 
Urge, therefore, the rich to open their purses. 
Tell all who desire to draw large interest for 
their capital, to send their money to Su-tchuen, 
where twenty sous produce annually two treas- 
ures by effecting the redemption of two souls. 

* Missionary* World, p. Si. 



132 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



It was not our salaried baptizers alone that con- 
ferred baptism upon 94,131 children of Pagans 
who were in danger of death ; but we unceas- 
ingly exhort the pious and intelligent faithful 
to go to the relief of children in the neighbor- 
hood who are threatened with being lost. It is 
these gratuitous auxiliaries that annually swell 
so high the total number of little Chinese bap- 
tized in danger of death.' ' * 

The results of such a method of missionary 
operations may be stated in the language of the 
Romish missionaries themselves. In one of 
Xavier's letters to a brother missionary in Trav- 
ancore, he writes, " If you will, in imagination, 
search through India, you will find that few will 
reach heaven, either of whites or blacks, except 
those who depart this life under fourteen years 
of age, with their baptismal innocence still upon 
them." f The Abbe Du Bois, himself a Romish 
missionary in Mysore, declares that Xavier, 
" being disheartened by the invincible obstacles 

* Missionary World, p. 81. f Life, p. 156. 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



133 



he everywhere met in his apostolic career, and 
by the apparent impossibility of making real 
converts, left India in disgust." * Another 
Roman-Catholic writer, describing the work of 
Romish missions in the Philippine Islands, says 
that " little, if any thing, has been done for the 
prosperity and development of the country, or 
for the intellectual and moral advancement of 
the people ; " and that " there, apparently, as in 
the other earlier dependencies of Spain, the 
Roman-Catholic ritual has become mingled in 
the most extraordinary manner with ceremonies 
borrowed from Paganism." f 

Another Jesuit missionary declares, of the 
converts in the field with which he was conver- 
sant, " that they had scarcely any thing belong- 
ing to Christianity, besides the bare name of 
Christians ; that they only minded the name they 
received in baptism, and, not long after, forgot 
that too." X The testimony of Protestant ob- 

* Anderson, For. Miss., p. 278. t Venn, p. 316. 
t Miss. World, p. 82. 
12 



134 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



servers is to the same effect. The secretary of 
the London Missionary Society, whose oppor- 
tunities for judging were most ample, de- 
clares of the Romish converts in Southern 
India, that, " except as to name, they were ex- 
actly and in every respect the same heathen 
Pariahs as they were before." * While the 
Roman-Catholic mission in the kingdom of 
Kongo had full sway for two centuries under 
Portuguese protection, yet, when that protection 
ceased, the mission perished, and left, according 
to the statement of Wilson in his " Western 
Africa," " the unfortunate inhabitants of that 
country in as deep ignorance and superstition as, 
and perhaps in greater poverty and degradation 
than, they would have been if Roman Catholi- 
cism had never been proclaimed among them."f 
During the hundred and forty years in which 
Romish missions were tolerated in China, five 
hundred missionaries were sent from Europe to 
China. But says Dr. Wells Williams, a man of 

* Miss, in S. India, p. 34. t p. 329. 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



135 



singular clearness in his judgment, and accuracy 
of statement, " What salutary effect has this 
large body of Christians wrought in the vast 
population of China ? None, absolutely none, 
that attract attention. While many of their 
converts exhibited the greatest constancy in 
their profession, suffering persecution, torture, 
imprisonment, banishment, and death, rather 
than deny their faith, the mass of the Romish 
converts in China can hardly be considered to 
have been much better than baptized Pagans." * 
Very little hope of good can therefore be based 
upon the success of Romish missions. They 
have had the grandest opportunity ; they have 
had means of money, and men without stint ; 
they have been conducted with an energy and 
zeal, and often with a self-devotion, to which the 
tribute of our admiration should not be wanting : 
but as they have not wrought with that Chris- 
tian power which produces purity of heart ; as 
their baptismal regenerations, so lavishly con- 

* Middle Kingdom, vol. ii. p. 324. 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



ferred, have not been followed by newness of 
life, — we must believe that the extension of 
Christianity is something other than the spread 
of the peculiarities and practices of the Romish 
Church, and that the conversion of the world 
to Christ demands quite another method of 
missionary operations than theirs. 

The method of Protestant missions is a very 
different one, and grows out of the cardinal 
doctrine of Protestantism itself. This is not, 
as too often stated, a protest against Romish 
authority. In so far as it is a protest, it is a 
protest against the Romish doctrine of salvation. 
In the Romish doctrine, salvation is always 
made dependent upon external forms and 
priestly mediation : it is to be sought by pen- 
ances and rites, by bodily mortification, by 
works which men can do, rather than by the 
grace which God alone can give. But the great 
thought of the Reformation was, that our own 
works cannot justify us before God ; that the 
righteousness by which we can stand approved in 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



137 



his sight is not in us, but in Christ ; that faith in 
the crucified Christ can alone give us forgiveness 
of sins, and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost ; 
in a word, that salvation is not wrought by man, 
ourselves, or others, but is a free gift, through the 
all-perfect work of the divine Redeemer. This, 
from the time of the Reformation, has been the 
essential element of Protestantism, and is still 
the one point wherein its distinction from the 
Papacy is most clearly to be noted. The Roman- 
ist still, as of old, maintains that the Church is 
the necessary means for faith ; that only by the 
Church can the soul come to Christ ; while Prot- 
estantism now, as ever, declares that the soul 
can only be a member of Christ's body as it 
partakes of his life and spirit ; that it can only 
come to the Church as it has first come to him. 
In a word, Protestantism makes religion a per- 
sonal concern of the individual subject, while 
Romanism sinks the individual in the body of 
the Church. 

This radical difference of doctrine illustrates 
12* 



138 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



exactly the difference between Protestant and 
Romish missions. Protestant missions do not 
begin by imposing the forms, and administering 
the ordinances, of the Church ; but they seek the 
conversion, and new life of individual souls. 
They take the Bible; they preach the gospel; 
they attempt to give the knowledge of salvation 
through Jesus Christ alone. If there were any 
doubt about the propriety of this method, such 
doubts must disappear, and the method can be 
seen to have its sufficient justification, in the 
actual results of Protestant missions, as already 
seen in these lectures. 

Sut on the Protestant ground there is an 
important question, upon which a wide difference 
of opinion and method actually exists among 
Protestant missionaries and Protestant friends 
of missions. There is no difference of view 
among evangelical Protestants as to the grand 
aim of missions, and the comprehensive means 
in accomplishing it. That the conversion of the 
world is the end sought, and the preaching of 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



139 



the gospel the means thereto., all agree. But shall 
we take the gospel at the outset, and proclaim 
it to the heathen just as soon as we can utter it ? 
or shall we, rather, seek to prepare them for its 
reception by a prior course of instruction in 
other things ? Shall we educate them in order 
to Christianize them ? or shall we seek to Chris- 
tianize them first, leaving education to follow as 
it may ? This is a different question from the one 
we have already discussed respecting education. 
We have seen that education as such has no 
purifying power. An increase of intelligence is 
not necessarily accompanied by an increase of 
virtue. The grosser and more revolting forms 
of vice may disappear from view in a more 
refined and cultured society, while still the 
selfishness and sensuality of the soul remain 
unchecked, and even become more intensely 
dominant. But may not education in the hands 
of the missionary, education accompanied by 
Christian teaching, be the means of reaching 
those to whom the missionary might have no 



140 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



other way of access ? When we go to the 
heathen who have attained a certain degree of 
civilization, as the Japanese, the Chinese, and 
the Hindus, and who might thus be attracted 
by opportunities for education when direct 
Christian influence would be repulsive, should 
we not set up schools, whose pupils, brought 
thus under our instruction in letters and science, 
we might be able also to instruct in divine 
things ? The question is a difficult one ; and 
directly opposite answers are given it by Prot- 
estant missionaries, accompanied by correspond- 
ingly divergent methods in Protestant missions. 

It is admitted, on all hands, that the apostolic 
method was that of direct evangelization. The 
apostles did not plant schools. They preached 
the gospel, and planted churches, and, so far as 
we can learn, they left all questions of educa- 
tion to adjust themselves as the new spirit 
which followed their labors would direct. 

But though there is no question that they 
began and continued and finished their mission 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



141 



in directly proclaiming Christ, not finding any- 
educational or other work a necessary prelimi- 
nary to the preaching of the gospel, it is said 
that " the apostles were men raised up at a 
special time, and for a special service ; and it 
does not follow, that, because twelve or fourteen 
of Christ's first disciples were chosen from the 
rest for a special sendee, therefore all his work- 
ing disciples in after-ages should do exactly as 
they did/' * " There are many aids in the hands 
of the modern missionary which were not in ex- 
istence at the time of the apostles : we may not 
argue, therefore, too closely from apostolic pro- 
cedure." I give the position just as it is taken ; 
but, after all, it must be regarded as a very 
striking fact, that Paul, writing to the Corinthi- 
ans what the spirit of inspiration must have 
directed also for the instruction of the whole 
Church in all after-time, should say, "And I, 
brethren, when I came to you, came not with 
excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring 

* Allahabad Conference, p. 114 : Mr. Miller's paper. 



142 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



unto you the testimony of God. For I de- 
termined not to know any thing among you, save 
Jesus Christ, and him crucified. . . . And my 
speech and my preaching was not with enticing 
words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration 
of the Spirit and of power : that your faith 
should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in 
the power of God." * 

The wisdom of men, the enticing words of 
man's wisdom, would seem, from the whole tenor 
of this passage, and that which precedes it, to 
mean persuasions addressed to the intellect in 
the effort thus to reach and renovate the inner 
life. It might be urged, with considerable force, 
that this would fairly include efforts of what- 
ever sort, to educate men, as a ^preliminary step 
to their conversion, and, if this be so, Paul not- 
only renounced such efforts in his own pro- 
cedure, but sets them before us as something 
which others should equally eschew. 

The more carefully we look at Paul's method 

* i Cor. ii. i, 2, 4, 5. 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



143 



of preaching the gospel to the heathen, the more 
clearly shall we see how profoundly it was 
adapted, not only to the wants of his time, but 
of all time. Paul did not discard education, nor 
consider the culture or the speculations of the 
intellect as of no concern ; but he took up these 
afterwards. He began with the preaching of 
Christ. Until the heathen could know him, he 
determined not to know any thing among them, 
save Jesus Christ and him crucified ; that their 
faith might not stand in the wisdom of men, but 
in the power of God. But, when this was accom- 
plished, he was ready for all such speculations 
as the great truths he was proclaiming might 
require. " Howbeit we speak wisdom among 
them that are perfect, which none of the princes 
of this world knew." Historically we can say, 
that education has always followed the preaching 
of the gospel. The Church has always been the 
mother of learning. The inspiration of the new 
life, once enkindled in the soul, quickens the 
whole man to a new development. The new 



144 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



development will, in every case, follow the 
inspiration of the new life ; but if we seek the 
development first, whether we succeed in gaining 
it in this way, or not, we do not thereby make 
progress towards the inspiration. 

If we are wise, we shall never ignore the great 
fact that men are not lifted from a lower to a 
higher plane of life through processes of the 
understanding, or through any enlightenment or 
enlargement of the intellectual powers. Men 
are not perhaps in any thing, certainly in the 
comprehensive conduct of their life, governed 
by their understandings. I do not now try 
to explain the fact : I only state it as within 
the sight of all. The controlling motives in 
human conduct do not spring from the intel- 
lectual side of human nature. We do not love 
as a process of inference, nor hate as a logical 
deduction. That which is all clear to the intel- 
lect may be any thing but cogent to the heart 
and to the will. 

The only motive which can move a will is 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



145 



either a will itself, or something into which a 
will enters. It is not a thought, but only a sen- 
timent, a deed, or a person, by which we become 
truly inspired. It is not the intellect, but the 
heart and the will, through which and by which 
we are controlled. It is not the precepts of life, 
but life itself, by which alone we are begotten, 
and born unto life. 

Now, there are two ways in which living 
power, personal power, the power of a will, may 
enter a soul, and give it life : tHe one is when 
God's will works upon us ; and the other, when 
our wills work upon one another. God's will 
may directly penetrate ours, enabling us to will 
and to do of his good pleasure ; and our own 
wills, thus inspired, may be the torch to kindle 
other wills with the same inspiration. It is in 
only one of these two ways that a human soul 
can be truly inspired; and, without a true inspira- 
tion, no amount of instruction, whether in duty 
or life, or any thing else, will change a single 
moral propensity. 
13 



146 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Can, therefore, schools, or colleges, or educa- 
tional influences of any sort, whether in Chris- 
tian or unchristian lands, operate as an agency 
for the improvement of human character, save 
as they bring directly before the mind, first, last, 
and midst and without end, the personal will of 
God as expressed and made mighty in the liv- 
ing Christ and the living Christian ? If mission 
schools, therefore, are properly to be started 
among the heathen, they should not be under- 
taken as a preparation, but as a place, for the 
preaching of the gospel. If required as a pre- 
paratory step to something better, it is not to 
be denied that they may easily become prepara- 
tory steps to something worse. If the mis- 
sionary spends his time in teaching the ignorant 
to read, this acquisition may enable them to 
read the Bible, and good books, it is true ; but 
it is equally true that it may furnish them 
acquaintance, also, with books of another and 
a contrary nature. And if only the intellect has 
become enlightened, and the heart still remains 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



H7 



unchanged in its corruption, will they not be 
just as likely, to say the least, to read the bad 
as the good ? and thus may not their intellec- 
tual quickening, if this is all that has been done, 
prove a curse, instead of a blessing ? There is 
abundant ground for such an inquiry. In 
" The Indian Evangelical Review/' in an article 
upon Education in Bengal, I find the following : 
" When educated, what do the people read ? 
The issue of books and pamphlets is increasing 
yearly at an enormous rate ; but very few of even 
the best vernacular books are free from obscen- 
ity. The great mass of novels, dramas, and 
poetical works now published in Bengal, is dis- 
tressingly corrupt and filthy. Immoral books 
and pamphlets are obtained easily by the pupils 
in the schools and colleges, and circulate freely 
among them. Book-hawkers find admission to 
the families of the respectable classes, and 
supply the females with the filthiest trash. 
And,- as the reading power of the country 
is increased, this vile stream, if allowed to flow 



148 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



on unchecked, will deposit its contaminating 
filth over a wider surface. Of a certainty, this 
matter demands the profound attention of the 
educators of the people." * 

Schools where converts are instructed, and 
thus trained for usefulness, are, of course, well, 
and may demand the missionary's careful atten- 
tion ; but is it a wise expenditure of missionary 
energy to educate heathen minds in a way 
which, in the language of a speaker at the Alla- 
habad Conference, " sets them the more against 
us, and gives them a club to break our heads " ? f 
This is a danger, surely, to be guarded against ; 
and is it not one always to be apprehended, 
when we use any other weapon in the great 
conflict of the Church and the world than the 
sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God ? 
I would speak with diffidence upon this point ; 
for I know there are accomplished educators at 
home, and very successful missionaries abroad, 
who affirm a different opinion : but I cannot 

* Number for October, 1873, P- l &4- t Proceedings, p. 121. 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



149 



shut out the conviction, that while a Christian 
influence, wherever effective, will lead to educa- 
tion, yet education itself, not only does not Chris- 
tianize, but may have a result which is positively 
unchristian. It is true that converts are often 
gathered from mission schools ; but I think no 
one would doubt that this is always the result 
of the Christian teaching which those schools 
enjoy: and I must believe, that, if the efforts 
employed in teaching letters and science to un- 
converted Pagans had been wholly expended in 
the teaching of Christ, still larger results would 
have been seen. If we should go to the heathen 
as Paul did, determined not to know any thing 
among them save Jesus Christ, and him cruci- 
fied, attempting no schools for the unconverted, 
but establishing these onlv to train those who 
have become Christ's disciples for the new 
work, in the new relations of life unto which 
they are called, speaking wisdom among them 
that are perfect, I cannot but believe that the 
number would be immeasurably increased of 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



those whose faith should stand, not in the wis- 
dom of men, but in the power of God. This I 
believe, because of the great truth, which we 
cannot too largely consider, that the preaching 
of the gospel is in reality not the proclamation 
of a doctrine, but the holding-up of a life. The 
gospel is not a theory, but a history. Its truths 
are historical facts, and therefore cannot be ex- 
pressed in abstract statements which the under- 
standing or the imagination can exhaust. They 
reach the will, and have a power to constrain 
conduct, and mould character, because they 
reveal God's will in his act, in his personal work 
for man's recovery. 

The gospel is a revelation of what God has 
done. It is not, therefore, simply a thought, 
which could never inspire us, but it is a senti- 
ment, a deed, a living person, with which we are 
brought face to face in the gospel. The his- 
torical Christ, who lived and died and rose 
again, and who ever lives in his disciples, repro- 
ducing himself in every Christian life, wherever 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



found, and who makes his people thus the in- 
struments for the inspiration of other souls, he 
is the wisdom of God, and the power of God, to 
every one that believeth. When belief is fixed, 
then we may translate this deed into a doctrine, 
this personal history into a form upon which the 
understanding can expatiate ; but this procedure 
of the understanding has value only as it pro- 
ceeds from faith. Faith is its source, but not 
its end. Faith begets all sound speculations of 
the intellect respecting the historical facts of the 
gospel ; faith inspires the process whereby the 
deeds of Christ are translated into the doctrines 
of the Church ; but faith itself is not begotten 
in this way. Faith is the gift of God : it is the 
work of God's Spirit alone ; and it is the divine 
history, the divine deeds, it is God in Christ, 
and Christ in the believer, through which the 
Spirit works ; for said the Lord himself, " When 
he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide 
you into all truth : for he shall not speak of 
himself ... he shall glorify me : for he shall 



CHRISTIAN. MISSIONS. 



receive of mine, and shall show it unto 
you." * 

This ought to be no strange doctrine to us. 
The great theme of the early preachers of the 
gospel was not simply Christ's doctrine, but 
Christ himself. They did not preach about 
him so much as they preached him. They 
ceased not, it is expressly said, to teach and to 
preach Jesus Christ. Whatever signs the Jews 
required, whatever wisdom the Greeks sought 
after, the apostles preached unto them all alike 
" Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling- 
block, and unto the Greeks foolishness ; but unto 
them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, 
Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of 
God."f 4k Some indeed," says Paul, " preach Christ 
even of envy and strife ; and some also of good 
will. . . . But what then ? notwithstanding, every 
way, whether in pretence or in truth, Christ is 
preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will 
rejoice." J This is "the mystery which hath 

* John xvi. 13, 14. f 1 Cor. i. 23, 24. t Phil. i. 15, iS. 



MISSIONARY METHODS. 



153 



been hid from ages and from generations, but 
now is made manifest to his saints : to whom God 
would make known what is the riches of the 
glory of this mystery among the Gentiles ; which 
is Christ in you, the hope of glory : whom we 
preach, warning every man, and teaching every 
man in all wisdom ; that we may present every 
man perfect in Christ Jesus." * The meaning of 
all this is not obscure. The historical Christ, 
the crucified and risen and ever-living Christ, 
was the one theme of the apostles' preaching. 
But if their example be not thought sufficiently 
instructive, if we fancy that God has taught us 
more, and has put better methods in our 
thoughts than the apostles in the early days of 
the preaching of the gospel were able to discern, 
yet the great truth remains, that it is personal 
power alone by which persons are moved; and 
the human will, whether ignorant or enlightened, 
needs more than the precepts of life, needs life 
itself, to kindle it into life. In Christian or un- 

* Coi. i. 26-28. 



154 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



christian lands, therefore, the teaching of schools 
is alone valuable when applied to cultivate the 
understanding of those whose wills are already 
converted, or when penetrated through and 
through with the preaching of Christ, and him 
crucified, to those still dead in sin. 



SIXTH LECTURE. 



MOTIVES FOR A HIGHER CONSECRATION TO THE 
MISSIONARY WORK. 

The considerations thus far presented are 
not sufficient to inspire the Church with the 
high missionary zeal to which she is sum- 
moned. The wants of the world are clear ; 
the failure of commerce, arts, institutions, 
education, to supply these wants, is unmis- 
takable ; the actual success, as well as the 
ideal character, of the gospel, puts its adaptation 
for the great work beyond a doubt ; yet the 
world will be left to perish, while men will 
be still seeking to save it by hopeless and help- 
less devices of their own, and the Church will 
sink into apathy, or rouse herself only to feeble 
endeavors, until some more potent motive than 

155 



i 5 6 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



these shall give her inspiration. Whence shall 
this motive come ? How shall the Church re- 
ceive the unclouded face and the quickening 
energy which shall enable her to look forth as 
the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, 
and terrible as an army with banners ? Of 
course, there is but one comprehensive answer 
to this inquiry. The Church can arise and shine, 
her light having come, only as the glory of her 
Lord shall have risen upon her. He is her life, 
and she will have energy, endurance, and holy 
zeal in her great work, only as he gives her his 
strength and inspiration. But the practical 
question returns, How shall this be ? Can the 
Church herself do aught to gain this endow- 
ment ? Must she lie still, and wait for the com- 
ing of her Lord, expecting no help till he shall 
bring it, and making no efforts till she shall re- 
ceive his quickening energy ? or can she hasten 
his advent by any endeavors of her own ? But 
the Lord is already in the midst of his Church ; 
and this waiting for his coming only shows that 



A HIGHER CONSECRATION. 



157 



our eyes are holden, so that we do not see his 
actual presence. " Lo, I am with you alway, even 
unto the end of the world," * is the farewell 
assurance with which he accompanies his last 
- command to his disciples : " Go ye into all the 
world, and preach the gospel to every creature." 
" Know ye not your own selves," says Paul to 
the Corinthians, "how that Jesus Christ is in 
you, except ye be reprobates ? " f The Church is 
his body, in which he dwells, and of which he is 
the head : " -For we are members of his body, of 
his flesh, and of his bones." $ " And he is the 
head of the body, the church." § He is the life, 
as well as the hope of glory, of all his people. 
By and by his people are to be with him accord- 
ing to his own prayer : " Father, I will that they 
also whom thou hast given me be with me where 
I am." || But now his words are, " If a man love 
me, he will keep my words ; and my Father will 
love him, and we will come unto him, and make 
our abode with him." ^[ 

* Matt, xxviii. 20. | Eph. v. 30. i| John xvii. 24. 
t 2 Cor. xiii. 5. § Col. i. 18. ^ John xiv. 23. 



i 5 8 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Xo efforts of the Church, therefore, are need- 
ed to secure that nearness, that indwelling pres- 
ence, of her Lord, which is already her posses- 
sion, and which, if it only could be recognized, 
would be an inspiration of superhuman power. 
What the Church needs is, not to wait for some 
greater strength, but to be conscious of the 
great endowment which she already has. She 
needs herself to penetrate more deeply the deep 
meaning of Scripture respecting that fellowship 
already subsisting between herself and her Lord, 
wherein she, being joined unto him, is one spirit 
with him. She needs to ponder till she feels 
the force of his own words, " I am the vine, ye 
are the branches ; " * — one life, we must remem- 
ber, being in the vine, and the same life perme- 
ating the branches ; — " I am the bread of life : 
he that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, 
dwelleth in me, and I in him ; " f " Henceforth I 
call you not servants ; for the servant knoweth 
not what his lord doeth : but I have called you 

* John xv. 5. t John vi. 56. 



A HIGHER CONSECRATION. 



159 



friends ; for all things that I have heard of my 
Father, I have made known unto you." * These 
friends of Christ, redeemed and renewed, thus 
endowed with the knowledge of the Father, 
should also apprehend the meaning of those 
words which the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, 
whom he sent from the Father, and who testi- 
fied of him, addresses to his disciples : " And 
ye are complete in him, who is the head of all 
principality and power : in whom, also, ye are 
circumcised with the circumcision made without 
hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the 
flesh by the circumcision of Christ : buried with 
him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with 
him through the faith of the operation of God, 
who hath raised him from the dead. And you, 
being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision 
of your flesh, hath he quickened together with 
him, having forgiven you all trespasses." f It 
is this blessed and glorious knowledge, it is the 
becoming conscious of what is already their un- 

* John xv. 15. t Col. ii. 10-13. 



i6o 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS 



conscious possession, which shall enable Christ's 
people, as they have therefore received Christ 
Jesus the Lord, so to walk in him, " rooted and 
built up in him, and stablished in the faith as 
they have been taught, abounding therein with 
thanksgiving." * 

The difference between a man and a brute — 
the broad gulf separating the two, which no 
development nor evolution can ever bridge — is 
in the knowledge of God, which the man is 
never without, and which the brute never pos- 
sesses. It belongs to the inalienable substance 
of the human soul that it knows God. u To 
know God, and to possess reason," says Jacobi, 
a are one and the same thing; just as not to 
know God, and be a brute, are one and the same 
thing." f And the difference between a Christian 
and other men is in the knowledge of God in 
Christ, — a knowledge which is as free as it is 
full and all-sufficient, and which all men might 
possess, but to which the Christian alone has 

* Col. ii. 7. t Von den gottlichen Dingen. 



A HIGHER CONSECRATION. 



161 



actually attained. " If our gospel be hid, it is 
hid to them that are lost : in whom the god of 
this world hath blinded the minds of them which 
believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel 
of Christ, who is the image of God, should 
shine into them. . . . For God, who commanded 
the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined 
in our hearts, to give the light of the knowl- 
edge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ." f In like manner, the difference be- 
tween the Church all glowing in her devo- 
tion, full of zeal and holy energy in the work 
of her Lord, and the Church listless and luke- 
warm, whom the faithful and true witness will 
spew out of his mouth, is in the clear and vital 
realization that the all-glorious One, like unto the 
Son of man, whom John saw in the midst of the 
seven golden candlesticks, was no unreal vision 
or transient appearance, but the glorious and 
abiding truth of Him whose eyes were as a 
flame of fire, and whose countenance was as the 

t 2 Cor. iv. 3-6. 

14* 



l62 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

sun shineth in his strength, and who is still in 
the midst of his Church, Jesus Christ, the 
same yesterday, to-day, and forever. 

This increasing consciousness in the Chris- 
tian, of the presence and the will of Christ, is 
the index of the increasing growth of spiritual 
life ; but spiritual life, like all other life, does 
not reveal its own processes of growth. We 
can only see the results, and infer from these 
what the processes are. Carvallo, the Portu- 
guese botanist, is said to have attempted, by 
carefully examining with his microscope a 
rapidly-growing plant, to see the actual pro- 
cedure of its growth ; but the process was far 
too subtle for his eyes, with all the aid his 
glasses could give. The steady enlargement, 
the actually accomplished result, was all that he 
could see. The kingdom of God is " as if a 
man should cast seed into the ground, and 
should sleep, and rise night and day, and the 
seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not 
how." * 

* Mark iv. 27. 



A HIGHER CONSECRATION. 



163 



But while we cannot tell, by looking within, 
how the consciousness of the divine fellowship 
takes possession of us, how the sense of the 
indwelling Christ, working out his own plans in 
and through us for the triumph of his kingdom, 
becomes a fire of holy zeal, consuming all our 
apathy, and kindling us to the ardor of an all- 
absorbing devotion to him, we do know that this 
blessed result is assured by looking away from 
ourselves unto him, till "we all, with open face 
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, 
are changed into the same image from glory to 
glory.' ' * 

The first thing needful, therefore, in order 
that the Church may have a larger sense of the 
magnitude of Christ's own mission, and of his 
power to accomplish all his purpose, and thus, 
through her fellowship with him, a larger sense, 
also, of her own mission and her own power, is 
that she look unto him. This she must do, if 
she be truly his Church. It is her response to 

* 2 Cor. iii. 18. 



164 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



his invitation : " Look unto me, and be ye 
saved," through which her life as his Church 
becomes enkindled ; and it is only by her 
continually looking unto him that the living 
fire upon her altars can be kept alive. 

But, passing from such general considerations, 
there are two particulars towards which this con- 
templation of Christ, this vision of him, which 
is to transfuse us with his spirit, till it shall 
transform us into his likeness, will be most 
appropriately displayed. The first is the all- 
sufficiency of his atoning sacrifice. In order that 
we may find in his spirit the undying inspira- 
tion, the all-conquering motive, to seek the 
world's conversion, we need to keep before us 
the great truth, that, in his death, the full provis- 
ion for the world's salvation has been actually 
made. That his atonement has a universal 
efficacy, that he suffered and died as the Re- 
deemer of the whole human race, we should see, 
without a doubt, to be the clear doctrine of the 
Bible. 



A HIGHER CONSECRATION. 



165 



" He died for all." * " God was in Christ, rec- 
onciling the world unto himself." f " Who gave 
himself a ransom for all." X " And he is the propi- 
tiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also 
for the sins of the whole world." § " Therefore, 
as by the offence of one, judgment came upon 
all men to condemnation ; even so by the right- 
eousness of one, the free gift came upon all men 
unto justification of life." || That these state- 
ments are to be taken in the largest sense, that 
the all-sufficiency of Christ's atonement em- 
braces even those who never receive it, and are 
consequently lost, is not only clear from the very 
idea of the atonement itself, — the atonement 
being impossible without a divine sacrifice, 
and a divine sacrifice which has not a divine 
all-sufficiency being inconceivable, — but is put 
beyond all proper doubt by 2 Pet. ii. 1, where 
the false teachers who bring in damnable here- 
sies, and bring upon themselves swift destruc- 

* 2 Cor. v. 15. t 1 Tim. ii. 6. || Rom. v. 18. 
t Ibid., v. 19. § 1 John ii. 2. 



l66 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

tion, are said to deny the Lord who bought, i.e., 
redeemed, even them. The difficulties which 
some see in this doctrine, as though it implied a 
fruitless work on the part of God, are certainly 
no greater than belong to the doctrine concern- 
ing the Holy Ghost, whose influences, however 
adequate in themselves, yet fail to renew many 
hearts upon which they are exerted, and are not 
so great as belong to the doctrine which denies 
the universal adequacy of the work of Christ or 
of the Holy Ghost. We accept it, therefore, as 
the truth of Scripture, that, while the living God 
is the Saviour specially of those who believe, his 
salvation so truly concerns, and is so adequate 
to save, even those who do not believe it, that, in 
a true sense, we may call him, as the Bible does, 
" the Saviour of all men." * 

But if we accept this fully, if we realize its 
large significance, what becomes of any apa- 
thy of ours respecting the world's conversion? 
I do not ask what becomes of it on the ground 

* i Tim. iv. io. 



A HIGHER CONSECRATION. l6j 

of our sympathy with man, but what on the 
ground of our sympathy with Christ. That the 
world is perishing without Christ, we clearly 
see ; that it can be saved through him, and only 
through him, is all apparent : but this is not the 
great motive which urges us to efforts for the 
world's conversion. Sympathy with the world 
in its wretchedness and woe is a feeble and 
flickering fire, which expires in its own burning. 
Man is not, can not be, the savior of man ; and 
the evidence is all-abounding that he would not 
if he could be. Not the love of man, but the 
love of Christ, and not our love to Christ, but 
Christ's love to us, is the constraining motive of 
the Christian. " Because we thus judge, that, if 
one died for all, then were all dead " (or, rather, 
then all died, — died in respect to their own 
strength and sufficiency), " and that he died for 
all, that they which live " (they which live in the 
new life which he imparts) " should henceforth 
not live unto themselves, but unto him which 
died for them, and rose again." * Brethren^ let 

* 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. 



1 68 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

this same mind be in you which was also in 
Christ Jesus. Did he die for the world ? Is the 
provision in his death adequate for the salvation 
of all men ? Then, where is the heart united to 
him, quickened by his life, which is not also in- 
spired by his love for souls for whom he died ? 
The wants of the world, the wretchedness and 
woes of men, unable of themselves to move us, 
become now the fuel to feed the fire which he 
has enkindled ; and, while we love God only be- 
cause he first loved us, we learn also to know, 
out of our full experience, " that he who loveth 
God will love his brother also." * Here, then, 
we must come for our inspiration. The cross 
of Christ must move us towards the conversion 
of the world, if we are ever moved. And it 
will move us, it cannot help moving us, if we 
are only by its side. If forgiveness of sin have 
any meaning to us, if there be to us any pre- 
ciousness in the blood of Christ, we must tell it 
for Christ's sake to all around ; and our eager- 

* I John iv. 21. 



A HIGHER CONSECRATION. 



169 



ness in proclaiming it will be just in proportion 
to the power with which we have felt its appli- 
cation. It was in view of his cross, it was in 
reference to the death he should die, that the 
Son of man exclaimed, " Now is the judgment 
of this world : now shall the prince of this world 
be cast out." * And it is in the vision of the same 
cross, overshadowing and absorbing us, that we, 
crucified with Christ, have such a fellowship 
with him, that it is no longer we who live, but 
Christ who liveth in us, f — we taking up his 
purposes, and entering into his self-forgetting 
sacrifice to save men, while he dwells within us, 
and endows us with his strength for the final 
victory. 

But there is another motive still. The dying 
Redeemer is the risen Lord, who commands his 
disciples to go into all the world, and preach his 
gospel to every creature. These are his last 
words, which should not, however, be regarded 
altogether in the light of a command : they 

* John xii. 31. f Gal. ii. 20. 

*5 



170 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



are a benediction as well. The uplifted hands 
with which the risen Lord blessed his disciples 
as he was parted from them, and a cloud re- 
ceived him out of their sight,* are no more a 
token of grace than are these most blessed 
words ; for in them He who must now reign 
till he hath put all enemies under his feet f 
associates his disciples with himself in his tri- 
umph. His great work becomes thus also 
theirs. They become thus ambassadors for 
Christ, by whom God beseeches men, J workers 
together with him, that men may receive not 
the grace of God in vain, § ministers of the 
new testament, || and laborers together with God.^[ 
But what a dignity is this ! What an exaltation 
of privilege ! What an incitement to all energy 
of endeavor in this association of the redeemed 
disciples with their risen Lord ! As the igno- 
rance and doubts and gloom and vacillation of 
the early disciples were exchanged for clear 

* Luke xxiv. 50 ; Acts i. 9. J 2 Cor. v. 20. || 2 Cor. iii. 6- 
t 1 Cor. xv. 25. § Ibid., vi. 1. IT 1 Cor. iii. 9. 



A HIGHER CONSECRATION. 



171 



assurance, and joyful hope, and unswerving 
devotion to their crucified Master, by his 
resurrection from the dead, the same revelation 
of himself to us — a revelation which, by the gift 
of the Spirit and the subsequent history of the 
Church, is to the soul that deeply ponders it 
more clear and full than was possible to the dis- 
ciples who only discerned the bodily presence of 
their Lord — will banish all our uncertainty and 
apathy, and quicken our faith and hope and love 
with a devotion to Christ which will not waver, 
and a joy in his fellowship which cannot be 
quelled. , 

Here, then, is our motive, the grand and 
ever-inspiring motive, — our dying and risen and 
all victorious Saviour. Not the wants of men, 
but the work of Christ, not the wretchedness of 
the world, but the will of the world's Redeemer, 
who is our Lord, whose will, regnant over ours, 
makes us willing in the day of its power, — this 
is our undying inspiration, whereby our words 
become the echo, and our works the fulfilment, 



172 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



of his exulting cry : " And I, if I be lifted 
up from the earth, will draw all men unto 
me," * 

* John xii. 32. 



SERMON. 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST THE JUSTIFICA- 
TION OF MISSIONS. 

" And was raised again for our justification." — Rom. iv. 25. 

The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ 
from the dead is undoubtedly set forth in the 
New Testament as a literal truth. It is equally 
clear, that the Xew-Testament writers, whether 
deceived or not themselves, had no intention of 
deceiving others. They tell what they thought, 
at least, was the truth about their Lord. That 
he died upon the cross, was buried, and rose 
again the third day, and appeared to many, the 
same Jesus which was crucified, is now admitted 
— alike by the most intelligent enemies of the 
gospel, as well as by its friends — to have been 
the belief of his original disciples. The most 



174 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



noted, and perhaps the ablest, of recent writers 
against the Christian faith — Strauss, in his 
" New Life of Jesus " — fully allows " that the 
disciples firmly believed that Jesus had arisen."* 
He declares it to be " quite evident, that the 
origin of the Christian Church was by faith in 
the miraculous resurrection of the Messiah ; and 
that the disciples received an impression which 
lay at the bottom of their future ministry, that 
he was a conqueror over death and the grave, 
and was the Prince of life." f The supposi- 
tion that the disciples fabricated the story, and 
sought to impose it upon the credulity of men, 
themselves knowing it to be false, may, there- 
fore, be dismissed, as no longer needing a reply. 

But, if the disciples believed what they said, 
how could they have been mistaken? The evi- 
dence which wrought this belief was of a sort 
easily tested. It lay in the sphere of their 
most common and most undoubted capacity of 
judging. It did not follow their preconceived 

* Vol. i. p. 399. t Ibid., p. 412. 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



175 



notions ; for the first announcement that Christ 
had arisen seemed to them an idle tale, and 
they believed it not.* It was not begotten of 
their desires or hopes ; for they were utterly 
cast down by the crucifixion, and their only 
dreams of the Messiah had been of an earthly 
and temporal prince and kingdom, f Their 
belief was not sudden, nor did it grow rapidly. 
They sifted all the evidence, which they finally 
accepted, only because they found it irresistible. 
During a period of forty days from the cruci- 
fixion, Jesus is reported to have appeared to 
them, and to others who knew him well, at 
times so numerous, and under circumstances so 
various, that all doubts among them, though 
they were strong, and seemed likely to be per- 
sistent, were destroyed. He appeared unto the 
eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them 
with their unbelief and hardness of heart, be- 
cause they believed not them which had seen 
him after he was risen. $ In the midst of their 

* Luke xxiv. n. t Luke xxiv. 21. t Mark xvi. 14. 



176 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



terror and affright at an event so amazing, he re- 
assured them by the most palpable proof of his 
living and bodily presence with them. " Behold 
my hands and my feet," he said, "that it is I 
myself : handle me, and see ; for a spirit hath 
not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And, 
when he had thus spoken, he showed them his 
hands and his feet." * To the doubting Thomas 
he said, " Reach hither thy finger, and behold 
my hands ; and reach hither thy hand, and 
thrust it into my side : and be not faithless, but 
believing."! He is said to have shown "him- 
self alive after his passion by many infallible 
proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speak- 
ing of the things pertaining to the kingdom of 
God." | The apostles became convinced of the 
great truth slowly; and they all became con- 
vinced of it in the same degree of undoubting 
confidence. No one of them, though persecuted, 
and at length martyred for his faith, ever after- 
wards doubted that his crucified Lord, in very 

* Luke xxiv. 39, 40. t John xx. 27. | Acts i. 3. 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 1 77 



deed and truth, had risen from the dead. More- 
over, others believed the same thing. Paul, writ- 
ing to the Corinthian church, some twenty-five 
years afterwards, refers to five hundred witnesses 
by whom the living Lord was seen at once, the 
greater part of whom, he says, remain unto this 
present, and are therefore vouchers for the fact. 
Now this belief, thus honestly and confidently 
held, and by such large numbers of those most 
competent to judge respecting it, is unaccountable 
on any other supposition than that it was justi- 
fied by the truth. To suppose that Jesus did 
not die, but only swooned upon the cross, and 
that he was laid in the tomb in a state of uncon- 
sciousness, from which he afterwards revived, 
and then came forth and re-appeared to his disci- 
ples in his natural life, rouses far more difficult 
questions than it answers, and, though once 
gravely put forth, is now ridiculed even by those 
who disbelieve in a miraculous resurrection. 
For how could he come forth ? and what became 
of him afterwards ? and how could such a per- 



i 7 8 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



son, weak as he must have been, have given his 
disciples their undoubting conviction that he 
was the conqueror of death? To suppose that 
any one should have succeeded, even should 
any one have attempted, to personate to the dis- 
ciples their Master and Friend, whom they had 
known and loved and companied with so inti- 
mately and so long, would be an improbability 
more wonderful by far than the literal truth of 
the story which they relate. Such a deception 
would require a miracle. It is just as improba- 
ble that all the disciples could have come to 
believe, by a sort of hallucination, through 
nervous excitement, in some unreal vision of 
Christ's appearance.* Such a vision might 
come to a single person. Individuals are liable 
to hallucinations, which carry with them all the 
force of reality ; but this is never the case with a 
class possessing such different temperaments as 
the apostles, and having naturally such different 
ways of looking at any thing. Physiology puts 

* Strauss. 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 1 79 

its inexorable bar in the way of a theory which 
attempts to account for the same conviction in 
the sanguine Peter, and the choleric Paul, and 
the melancholic John, through nervous excite- 
ment. Nervous excitement in men so different, 
if we could conceive it to be able to delude them 
all with subjective states which had no reality, 
would have, not the same, but very different, 
manifestations. The apostles, however, had all 
of them the same belief, that Jesus rose from 
the dead. They all believed that they had seen 
him, and talked with him, and touched him again 
and again, after they had seen him crucified, and 
dead and buried. Instead of being formed out 
of their subjective states, this belief, as we have 
seen, contradicted all their prejudices. Still 
further, if they were all so ready to be imposed 
upon by fancied visions, how was it that they 
held the first announcement of the resurrection 
by the women to be an idle tale ? or how could 
Mary believe that the risen Saviour was the gar- 
dener, or, again, that the gardener was the risen 



i8o 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Saviour ? or how could the two who walked 
with him to Emmaus take an unknown man to 
be him, or talk so long with him, and still think 
him a stranger? or how could the assembled 
disciples have trembled before him, instead of 
rejoicing at his appearance ? or how could they 
have needed to be convinced of the reality of 
his resurrection, by his partaking of their meal, 
and showing them the marks of his wounds ? * 
No, no. There are no traces of delusion, any 
more than of dishonesty, in this narrative. Th§ 
accounts given us are sober, statements by sober 
and trustworthy men. If ever there was clear 
and credible testimony to a literal fact, we have 
it here. 

But there are many men unwilling, and per- 
haps unable, to weigh considerately the argu- 
ment for the truth of Christ's resurrection, 
having the preconceived opinion that it cannot 
be true, because of the miracle which it involves. 
It is one of the curious phases of modern 

* Lange, Life of Christ, vol. v. p. 120. 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. l8l 

opinion, that men who are foremost in their 
demand for actual facts, and in their defence of 
the Baconian method, — which requires that all 
prejudices be removed, and the actual facts of 
observation be accepted, whatever they may be, 
— should also, when the fact of a miracle is in 
question, be equally forward to deny it, because 
a certain theory of Nature, which they have come 
to entertain, makes a miracle impossible. Now, 
such a theory not only contradicts the true 
method of scientific inquiry, but it contradicts 
itself, as can be seen by any one whose eyes are 
clear. For to say that a miracle is impossible, 
because contrary to the facts of my experience, 
is absurd, unless the facts of my experience em- 
brace all the possible facts of any experience ; 
to claim which would be a greater absurdity 
still. Again : to say that no such fact as a 
miracle can be, because certain other facts, 
which I have learned from this source and that, 
and which I am pleased to call "the order of 
Nature," forbid it, leads one to ask for a more 

16 



182 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



precise designation of this order of Nature, and 
for the proof that it actually exists. This proof 
must either rest within, or must reach beyond, 
the field of our experience ; that is, it must be a 
proof to which our experience actually testifies, 
or one respecting which our experience has no 
witness whatever. But our experience, at the 
farthest, only testifies to that which is, and never 
reaches to that which can be. If my experience 
contain nothing miraculous, I may, of course, 
deny the existence of a miracle so far as my 
experience reaches ; and if my judgments rest 
only on what I have experienced, that is, if they 
be only inferences from what I actually see, I 
am not entitled to make any affirmations re- 
specting what lies beyond ; and that a miracle 
has not taken place in another experience than 
my own, is quite out of my province to say. 
The moment I make such a sweeping assertion 
as to affirm or deny any thing universal, I must 
leave the ground of my experience, which is 
necessarily partial and limited, and take my 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



183 



stand on a basis back of experience, and reach- 
ing beyond it. But such a groundwork lies also 
back of Nature, and inevitably leads the thought 
into the living presence of the supernatural. 
Our natural science is fond of its generaliza- 
tions ; but no generalization is possible without 
the supernatural. It is an unmeaning babble 
to talk of comprehensive laws, unless there be a 
comprehending Reason and Will, whose ideas 
and plans these laws express. The current 
notion, in some quarters, that we can gain, or 
have, perchance, got, such universal conclusions, 
that Nature can be shut in upon itself, and God 
shut out, is exactly the absurdity of supposing 
that we see when we have closed our eyes, and 
turned the very light of all our seeing into 
darkness. Every process of the human mind 
bears witness to the divine Mind. Every 
thought we can have of Nature, when profoundly 
questioned, is seen to rest upon the knowledge, 
undoubting and universal, that Nature has its 
living Author, its spiritual Creator. But cannot 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



he who has made Nature also unmake it if he 
will, or order in it whatever changes he may- 
please ? And if men who did not like to retain 
God in their thoughts, professing themselves to 
be wise, became fools, because that, when they 
knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither 
were thankful, but became vain in their imagina- 
tions, and their foolish hearts were darkened, 
what is to hinder him, if his love impels it, from 
making such changes in Nature as shall more 
conspicuously manifest himself, and more glori- 
ously carry forward the eternal purpose for 
which he hath created all things by Jesus 
Christ ? Such changes are miracles. They are 
not contradictions to Nature; but they are the 
carrying of Nature upward to a higher plane, 
and onward to grander results than Nature in its 
unhindered action alone could reach. They are 
not to be considered as violations of the order 
of Nature : rather are they the cropping-out in 
Nature of the higher order of the supernatural, 
without which the so-called order of Nature 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 1 8 5 

would be but an empty chaos. They are rifts 
in the clouds of the earth's atmosphere, through 
which the glories of the heavens, which make 
the clouds resplendent and the earth radiant, 
can shine. They are not the new development 
of some old force which had been in Nature from 
the beginning ; but they are a new creation, 
by which new forces, henceforth to work on 
in harmony with the old, are added to these. 
Surely such changes are possible for God to 
make. Surely He who hath created once can 
do it also again. Surely, if the inspiration of 
genius may sometimes light up the human face 
with a glow which shows the glory of the soul 
beyond all ordinary thoughts ; if the light of 
love may sometimes lend a lustre to the eye, 
through which there shines a look of beauty 
before unknown, — much more may the aspect 
of the things which are made, in which the 
eternal power and Godhead of their Maker 
have, from the creation of the world, been 
clearly seen, take on some altogether new 

16* 



1 86 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

expression, and become radiant with a glory all 
undiscovered before, when he would reveal 
through them, also, his forgiving and renewing 
love. Surely all this is possible ; and miracles, 
instead of being irrational and inconceivable, 
are the very beauty of reason, and the very light 
of our thoughts respecting Nature, when they 
are correctly apprehended. Creation itself is 
a miracle. The most recent science, in pro- 
found mathematical demonstrations respecting 
the mechanical theory of heat, has shown, on 
scientific grounds alone, the need of some 
higher power than Nature, in order to its 
origination ; and therefore miracles cannot be 
impossible at any stage of Nature's continuance. 

The only proper attitude towards this ques- 
tion, and the only truly scientific method, is to 
inquire whether such occurrences have actually 
taken place, — an inquiry whose answer is only 
to be gained through a careful sifting of the evi- 
dence which declares them. If we find wonders 
reported, which turn out to be no miracles, but 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



187 



only delusions of witchcraft or magic, these no 
more militate against the reality of miracles than 
does an abundance of counterfeits against the 
reality of genuine coin. If we find some mira- 
cles reported for which the evidence fails, this no 
more precludes our finding others of undoubted 
verity than do false statements in other matters 
prevent us from learning any thing true. Let 
the quality of the reported miracle and its evi- 
dence be sifted to the utmost ; and, while we 
reject nothing from preconceived scepticism, let 
nothing be taken in credulous superstition. Let 
the eye be open and clear, and the heart recep- 
tive, and responsive only to the truth ; and, if 
miracles are proved by sufficient testimony to 
have taken place, the wise man will accept 
them, and follow their conclusions, whatever 
they may be. 

Setting aside then, as we should, all our preju- 
dices and narrow notions, and looking for the 
true fact alone, with a single willingness to 
receive it, the evidence for the resurrection of 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



Christ becomes overwhelming. It has been 
so from the first. It convinced the apostles, 
though prejudiced against it, and receiving it 
very slowly; and they maintained their faith 
through ignominy and persecution, and in the 
face of death itself. It convinced the people to 
whom it was first preached, and who had every 
opportunity to test its truth. The proof is clear 
beyond all doubt, that the resurrection of Christ 
was believed in Jerusalem itself, by thousands 
who had probably seen and certainly knew of 
his crucifixion, and who were led to believe that 
he had risen from the dead, by the irresistible 
evidence with which the fact was attested. It 
has convinced candid and thoughtful men in all 
subsequent time, wherever the evidence has 
been examined, and no prejudices have been 
allowed to weaken its force. There is no his- 
torical fact whose literal truth is more 
thoroughly established than this. 

The place which this truth holds in the 
scheme of Christian doctrine is very clear. The 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 1 89 

resurrection of Christ was a divine seal set upon 
his work. It was the divine confirmation of all 
his words. He was declared to be the Son of 
God with power, according to the spirit of holi- 
ness, by the resurrection from the dead. The 
declaration of his Messiahship is accomplished 
in his resurrection. " The promise which was 
made unto the father..," says Paul, that is, the 
promise of the Messiah, " God hath fulfilled unto 
us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus 
again ; as it is also written in the second psalm, 
Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten 
thee." In his incarnation and life upon the 
earth, there is the manifested presence of God, 
condescending to dwell with man. In his mira- 
cles, in his teachings, in his sufferings, and in 
his death, the divine power and wisdom and 
righteousness and love shine all gloriously. In 
them all, there stands revealed Immanuel, God 
with us, cheering and strengthening us by his 
sympathy and manifold bounty, but humbling 
us also, as he makes manifest our defilement by 



190 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



the revelation of his purity and condescension 
and self-forgetting love. But in his resurrection 
we come to know the grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who, though he was rich, became poor, 
that we, through his poverty, might become rich. 
It is not simply God dwelling with man, but 
man lifted to an eternal fellowship with God, 
which we here behold. In his life, even to his 
death, there is a constant conflict waged for us 
against foes aiming at our destruction, and 
whose destroying fury we had no means to 
restrain ; but whether the conflict is of any 
avail for us, whether he is victorious or van- 
quished at its close, who can tell ? The dark- 
ened sun, and quaking earth, and rending rocks, 
tell the terrors of the struggle and its awful im- 
port ; but, when he dies upon the cross, who, 
afterwards, can speak of life or salvation ? Can 
he save others, when himself he cannot save ? 
But when it was not possible for him to be 
holden of death, when he rises from the dead, 
death having no more dominion over him, we 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



IQI 



rise with him, also victorious over death ; and 
the believer in Jesus makes the triumphant 
challenge, Who is he that condemneth, since 
Christ who has died is rather risen again, who is 
even at the right hand of God, who also maketh 
intercession for us ? " O death, where is thy 
sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks 
be to God, which giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." 

In his death, the chastisement of our peace 
was upon him ; but without his resurrection who 
could ever know that with his stripes w T e are 
healed ? He died for sinners, whose curse he 
bore ; he rose again for sinners, w r hose justifi- 
cation he has now become. In his crucifixion, 
He, in whom was no sin, was made sin for us ; 
but through his resurrection, w T e, in whom is no 
righteousness, find righteousness in him. For 
"we believe on Him that raised up Jesus our 
Lord from the dead, who was delivered for our 
offences, and was raised again for our justifi- 
cation." 



192 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



The ascendency which this truth was able 
to gain over the lives of the apostles illustrates 
the impulse which it ever gives to Christian 
activity in the preaching of the gospel of Christ. 
When Christ was apprehended, they were terror- 
stricken ; and they all forsook him, and fled. 
When he was put to death, they were appalled. 
But there never was a bolder set of men than 
these same timid disciples, after they began to 
preach the resurrection of their Master. All 
their timidity and irresolution disappear. Their 
dismay gives place to a joyous exultation. 
Scorn, hatred, persecution, martyrdom, have no 
terrors for them now. These men, who seemed 
settling down into the night of an unbroken 
despondency, A now stand out in the noontide of 
all courage and hope and endurance, ready to 
face any difficulty, and flinch at no dangers. 
This great change was wrought in them wholly 
by the belief that Jesus, their Lord, was risen 
from the dead. This belief all absorbs them. 
They can talk and think of nothing else. They 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 1 93 



begin to preach ; and their one topic is Jesus 
and his resurrection. He died, and he rose 
again, they everywhere proclaim. All their 
views of Christ and his doctrine take tone from 
this belief. Their narrow notion of the Messiah, 
who was to restore again the kingdom to Israel, 
drops off like the hull from the germinating 
seed ; while, with a living power, the doctrine 
grows to an all-comprehending vision of the 
Redeemer and Saviour of mankind, in whom we 
have redemption through his blood, even the 
forgiveness of sins. The mourner in Geth- 
semane, and the martyr upon Calvary, by his 
resurrection, rises before them, no longer a suf- 
ferer or a victim, but as the Lord of life, who 
hath tasted death for every man, and who, for 
the suffering of death, is crowned with glory 
and honor. They gain their hope of eternal 
life through his resurrection. " Blessed be the 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," they 
say, "which according to his abundant mercy 
hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by 
17 



194 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



-the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." 
They rest every thing upon this great truth. 
" If Christ be not risen," they say, " then is our 
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." 

He was raised again for our justification. 
The resurrection of Christ, my brethren, has a 
further influence upon us than simply to secure 
our personal acceptance with God. We have 
seen, that, to the apostles, it became a living 
inspiration to the highest activity in the preach- 
ing of the gospel of their Lord. If truly appre- 
hended, it will become the same to us. It was 
the risen Lord who gave the great commission 
to his disciples : " Go ye into all the world, and 
preach the gospel unto every creature ; " and 
the perpetual justification and inspiration for 
this grand work is, that Jesus died, and rose 
again. It is the risen and ever-living Lord 
who is with his disciples alway, " even unto the 
end of the world," giving them all power to 
preach repentance and remission of sins, through 
his name, among all nations. 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 1 95 



All the meditation we can give upon the cru- 
cifixion of Christ furnishes food for the spiritual 
life. We need not cease to contemplate the 
cross. We should think often of Gethsemane 
and Calvary, the bloody sweat, and bitter 
shame, and cruel death ; and should grow in 
penitence and humbleness and love, when we 
remember why it is that He who was so rich 
became so poor. But it is not the highest type 
of the Christian experience that lingers always 
at the cross. He who was delivered for our 
offences was raised again for our justification. 
The open sepulchre that he has left ; the 
preaching of the angels, that he has risen from 
the dead ; and the showing of himself to his 
disciples, whom he constituted the witnesses of 
his resurrection, and commissioned to declare 
it to his Church, — this is the cheering truth by 
which we gain the answer of a good conscience 
towards God, and become able to walk in new- 
ness of life, knowing, that, if we were planted 
together in the likeness of his death, we shall 
be also in the likeness of his resurrection. 



196 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



In like manner, we are in no danger of hold- 
ing up too prominently before the world the 
atoning sacrifice and death of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. The banner of the Captain of our sal- 
vation is the banner of the cross ; but He who 
leads the hosts of his elect in their triumphant 
progress, and who gives them all their strength 
for the struggle and the victory, is the risen 
Saviour, the Lord, their righteousness ; no lon- 
ger in his humiliation, but now glorified, with all 
power given unto him in heaven and in earth, 
and who is with his disciples as they fulfil his 
great commission, alway, " even unto the end of 
the world." The resurrection of Christ, which 
turned the sorrows of his first disciples into joy, 
is the perpetual witness of his all-victorious 
power. Though, when we look upon the world, 
its sin and wretchedness are so dark and terri- 
ble and wide reaching, that there seems no room 
for hope, and thoughtful and loving souls, 
brooding over the ills around them, give up all 
for lost ; yet when the vision of the victorious 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 1 97 



Redeemer rises upon us, and we see the com- 
pleteness of his conquest over sin and death and 
the grave, the greatness of his purpose, and the 
glory of his power to save, shine all resplendent ; 
and the sorrow which abideth for a night gives 
place to the joy which cometh in the morning. 
The light which shines from his sepulchre 
drives away the darkness which hung around 
his cross, while the cross becomes luminous 
with a glory which can irradiate the world. 

When we see his resurrection, we learn, also, 
how it is that his crucifixion becomes the crisis 
of the world's history, that his cross becomes 
his throne, before which and by which the 
prince of this world is cast out ; and with 
believing hope we hear and echo his exulting 
cry, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, 
will draw all men unto me." 

This gospel of the resurrection of our Lord 
needs to be preached everywhere ; not only as 
an encouragement and inspiration to the activi- 
ty of his Church, but as a corrective to all the 
17* 



I98 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 

false views of the world regarding him. The 
literal truth of his resurrection as an historical 
fact, which courts every scrutiny, and defies all 
criticism, has a power, when clearly set forth, to 
remove all scepticism of the intellect ; and, from 
the day of Pentecost till now, its preaching has 
been accompanied by that power of the Holy 
Ghost which can overcome the deeper scepti- 
cism of the will. While the gospel, when cor- 
rectly apprehended, commends itself to every 
man's conscience in the sight of God ; while 
every Christian truth, when clearly stated, will 
be seen to carry its own witness within itself to 
the truth, so deeply do God's ways correspond 
in the human soul, made in God's likeness, 
to its own original insight of him, — yet the 
power of sin is so subtle, and the will has such 
sophistries of its own, wherewith to entangle 
and hoodwink the intellect, that we need contin- 
ually to appeal, in attestation of the doctrine, to 
outward facts which the senses can apprehend ; 
as Leverrier and Adams needed the actual dis- 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 1 99 



covery of the new planet in order to prove the 
value of their calculations to others, if not also 
to confirm them to themselves. 

Moreover, a clear view of the resurrection of 
Christ, as an historical truth, is necessary to a 
clear knowledge of redemption. The fall of 
man is an historical fact. Sin has entered the 
human race, and penetrated its whole history 
with death. Redemption from sin, if ever 
accomplished, must be just as actual a fact of 
history as is sin itself. He who is to redeem 
us from sin must actually stand in our place, 
and be wounded for our transgressions, and be 
bruised for our iniquities ; and the chastisement 
of our peace must be upon him, before we 
can be healed. All we, like sheep, have gone 
astray, and there must be laid upon him the 
iniquity of us all, before it can be lifted from 
ourselves. He who is to deliver us from the 
power of death must break that power through 
his own victorious deliverance ; and He who is 
to be our eternal life must show himself to us 



200 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



the Prince of life, through his actual triumph 
over death and the grave. However ideally 
perfect a system of salvation might be conceived 
to be, unless it should find expression in such 
actual facts as these, it must be powerless to 
save. It is thus that philosophy must ever 
prove itself inadequate for salvation, and that 
any education or culture, however extended, will 
always lack power to purify or give life to the 
world. 

Man, as a personal sinner, needs a personal 
Saviour. No thought, no system of doctrine, 
no enlightenment of the intellect, will ever break 
the bondage of the will to sin. We only get 
liberty and life through love ; but no description 
of love ever inspires us with love, any more than 
we can find warmth from all our knowledge of 
the sunlight. The warm ray alone can warm 
us : the loving deed alone can give us love. 
The glory of the risen Saviour can melt all the 
stubbornness of the frozen heart; and the power 
of his life in his conquest of death, if everywhere 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 201 



preached, would give light and life to all the 
world. 

" If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching 
vain, and your faith is also vain. . . . But now 
is Christ risen from the dead, and become the 
first-fruits of them that slept . . . and he must 
reign till he hath put all enemies under his 
feet. ,, 

Oh, my brethren, what a kindling impulse to 
all missionary efforts have we here! What 
courage, what fortitude, what high hopes, what 
wide-reaching plans, what earnest and increas- 
ing endeavor, what an undying impulse to evan- 
gelize the world, does the resurrection of our 
Lord incite in his Church ! Who that has any 
living view of this great truth, who that has 
felt its power in his own forgiveness and 
renewal and eternal life, can be slow of effort, 
or of weak desire, in preaching the gospel of a 
risen Saviour unto every creature ? We are not 
ashamed of this gospel of Christ ; " for it is the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that be- 



202 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



lieveth." We have no tame apologies begotten 
of timid belief, as we point perishing men to a 
dying and risen Saviour. We have no abate- 
ment to make from the supernatural and mirac- 
ulous claims of this gospel to the intellectual 
assent of a scornful and sceptical world. To 
all the forms of unbelief rife in Christian lands, 
we proclaim a gospel with sufficient proof, which 
is cogent both to convince the understanding, 
and to convert the heart. Here is a truth, also, 
which, clearly preached, can dispel the error 
with which the unrenewed heart deceives itself 
when it seeks its salvation through meritorious 
works of its own. He who beholds the all- 
sufficient work of the risen Redeemer can feel 
the need of nothing more, and must feel the 
fruitlessness of any thing less. Who can go 
about to establish his own righteousness, that 
has once discerned and submitted to this right- 
eousness of God ? Here, also, is a truth which, 
from its first proclamation, has ever shown itself 
mighty to the pulling-down of the strongholds 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 203 



of superstition in unchristian lands. The cold 
and blind and arbitrary will, without justice and 
without love, which the followers of the false 
prophet declare to be the only God ; the vague 
and impersonal essence, empty of thought, and 
unmoved by feeling, into whose limitless and 
unconscious void the Brahmin hopes to be 
absorbed; the helpless and hopeless presence 
through whose repeated incarnations the Buddh- 
ist is taught that existence is only a curse, and 
that annihilation is the only salvation ; the ruder 
and cruder forms of untutored faith, where people 
of appalling wretchedness and degradation find 
objects of worship which take on the shape of 
their own defilement ; all systems of false reli- 
gion, which, nevertheless, in their way, may be 
seeking the Lord, if haply they might feel after 
and find him, — can only be banished from the 
world, can only lose their hold upon the mind, 
by the truth of a living and loving divine Lord, 
who — having taken upon himself their nature, 
and manifested himself by divine works and 



204 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



words, as God actually present with men, and 
having taught men by his life the glory of the 
divine purity and sympathy and condescending 
grace — showed them, also, by his death, the 
wonders of a divine sacrifice for sin, and then 
made manifest by his resurrection from the 
dead that there needs no other sacrifice. The 
entrance of this truth giveth light : it giveth 
understanding unto the simple. Before its 
coming, the shadows flee, as the night before the 
morning. 

Notwithstanding all the darkness which still 
rests upon the world, the news of the great sal- 
vation is steadily extending. Within the last 
fifty years, there have been opened, outside of 
nominal Chrisfendom, more than four thousand 
centres of Christian influence, from which the 
light of the gospel shines. Dark places of the 
earth, which were full of the habitations of 
cruelty, have become homes of light and peace 
and joy, through the saving power of that godli- 
ness which hath the promise of the life that 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 205 



now is, as well as of that which is to come. 
The weight of the world's conversion rests upon 
the Church., and inspires a missionary zeal, and 
leads to efforts more abundant and more fruitful 
at the present day than ever before. But it is 
not upon this that we base our hope of the 
world's conversion. " Some trust in chariots, and 
some in horses ; but we will remember the name 
of the Lord our God." The promise of God 
made unto the fathers, and which he fulfilled in 
that he raised up Christ from the dead, is our 
sure reliance. We trust that promise. We 
know in whom we have believed, and are sure 
that he is able to keep what is committed to 
his hands. His resurrection, by w T hich he is 
declared to be the Son of God with power, 
proves that the kingdoms of this world shall 
become the kingdom of our Lord and of his 
Christ, and that he shall reign for ever and ever. 
" Yea, all kings shall fall down before him, all 
nations shall serve him." 

In the great work of seeking to hasten this 

18 



206 



CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. 



blessed consummation, we bow before our risen 
and ascended Redeemer, exclaiming, Hitherto 
hath the Lord helped us, and henceforth our 
trust shall be only in him. May he pour upon 
us his blessed Spirit, that we may know more of 
him and the power of his resurrection ! We 
acknowledge our dependence upon his right arm, 
which hath gotten for itself the victory. We 
abandon all reliance upon devices or achieve- 
ments of our own ; but with increasing hope 
in him, through the increasing faith which he 
permits us to cherish in his victorious power, 
we joyfully go forward as workers together with 
him, and call upon all the world to receive his 
great salvation. We need not speak of duty 
here, but of life and joy, and blessed com- 
munion with our Lord in his glorious work. 
His language to his disciples is, " Henceforth 
I call you not servants ; for the servant knoweth 
not what his lord doeth : but I have called you 
friends ; for all things that I have heard of my 
Father l I have made known unto you." We 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 20J 



know what his purpose is, and that nothing 
shall swerve him from its full accomplishment. 
All power is given unto him in heaven and in 
earth ; and his purpose cannot fail. He is the 
Saviour of sinners, and the life of the world ; for 
he "was delivered for our offences, and was 
raised again for our justification. ,, All hail the 
power of Jesus' name ! We catch the echo, and 
send it round the world. All hail, we cry, to 
this dying but deathless Prince ! " Lift up your 
heads, O ye gates ; and be ye lift up, ye ever- 
lasting doors ; and the King of glory shall come 
in." Let every knee bow to him, and every 
tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the 
glory of God the Father. 



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